December is about drawing conclusions and trying to take away the lessons learnt for the next year. Not sure about you, but for me here are few key lessons learnt in 2018 when it comes to Horizon 2020 proposals and projects. Please share with us your takeaways as well!
- Targets!
Horizon 2020 is coming to an end in two years, which means the impact assessment indicators are getting monitored more carefully. I would read again more for our projects.
- Open up!
It is not really a free option to opt out from the Research Data Pilot initiative, you should opt-in with all your project proposals and plan carefully the data management and open access issues. I would get familiar with the and the before putting together these sections.
- More details!
Reporting is getting more detailed in the sense that our officers are asking for more and more justification about our reported numbers. I would allocate more time and effort for collecting our and our partners’ data when doing the reports as it can be expected that more information will be asked for.
- More details #2!
In the Evaluation Summary Reports (ESRs) we read more and more “... not enough justified … not detailed enough … not clear enough” etc. Do you have the same feeling? We have 50 or 70 pages max, still, we are less efficiently using the space of a proposal template it seems. So I would give more attention to methodology and the work plan details than before, and impact would be better and more clearly (table/visual) underlined with indicators and target numbers.
- Outreach!
It is getting repeated in the calls and in EC communication that adequate public outreach is missing from the projects. Involving citizens and explaining them what benefits EU funded projects can bring as well as getting public support or just understanding for your project does create added value. In 2019 I would pay even higher attention to this.
What would you add? If you would like to know more on our lessons learnt, please join us in the next training season on one of our courses. In the meantime, I would like to wish you Happy Holidays and a great kick-off to 2019!
