Work Package 6
Communication and dissemination
The primary objective of this WP6 is to manage all aspects of communication between the partners, between the project and the outside communities (scientific and lay audiences) in relation to the work progress of the projects as well as organise and manage the structure and protocols for results dissemination.
ORBIS activities will be communicated not only to the peer scientists but to the general public. Equal care and numerous efforts will be made to reach the general audience and to explain the essence of the discoveries made. ORBIS beneficiaries will ensure that their research activities will become known to the society at large. The research results will be presented in a way that they can be understood by all interested individuals, including the young generation (school children) and senior citizens. These activities will be aimed at stimulating the public interest and improving the public understanding of importance of science as well as the influence of science upon daily life. Direct engagement with the public specific populations will help researchers to better understand public interest in priorities for science and technology and also the public concerns. The ORBIS web portal, actively administrated and updated will be user friendly for general audience and it will also explain research results for non-professionals. Each ORBIS participant will be obliged to communicate the results in a popular way through the national Festivals of Science, Scientist Night and other public meetings and presentations. The former experience of some of the ERs of ORBIS is that ESRs enjoy the festivals as much as the participating high-school students and that the festivals give ESRs the opportunity to learn, early in their research career how to share their newly acquired knowledge with others. Also, public press will be informed regularly about ORBIS scientific achievements and popular articles will publicise ORBIS results and potential benefits for the society.
The ORBIS action will start from communicating to multiple audiences about the aims and measures to be taken by the participating organisations to complete the programme of the project. The audiences will be kept informed what is going on within the ORBIS consortium and what is the current progress of the action. This will be achieved mainly by an interactive and dynamic website, driven by participating organisations and WP6 leaders and powered by a professional web-site administrator. The website content will be addressed to both peer scientists and the general public. Important and break-through research results for peer scientists will be prepared directly by all ORBIS participants. News for media, placed periodically in a dedicated section, will be provided by ORBIS researchers and translated into a popular style by website WP6 dedicated editor. In addition to the open communication between researchers, the action’s own community will communicate using intranet connections, limited by passwords to the participants.
From the beginning of the action, to inform and reach out to society, show the benefits of research.
The ORBIS participants will inform and reach out to the society early from the beginning of the action. Using the action communication channels, including the action website, press conferences and science festivals, the public will be informed why research is needed to make the drug products more affordable and accessible to the society. It will be carefully explained to non-professionals why in these efforts it is not enough to make drug manufacturers involved of their own and why they must be supported in their efforts by research professionals. Main pieces of information to be passed to the society to convince the potential patient is that the break-through new drug product or treatment usually results for a life-time research of an individual scientist leading to the discovery of functioning of the organism at the molecular level. One of the main goals of the action is to convince the society that the main benefit of ORBIS and research in general is that it can be used directly for the health benefits.
ORBIS participants will strictly follow the European Charter for Researchers referring to the obligations of researchers regarding the outreach and dissemination of the research results. All ORBIS researchers will ensure that they do their best to make the result of their research communicated and useful for the society as much as possible. ORBIS results in drug development and delivery will be disseminated and exploited in order to contribute to improvement the drug performance and economy of treatment. The results, right after the respective protection, will be disclosed and communicated to the public. All the necessary measures will be taken to exploit and possibly commercialise the results for the future benefits of the society. ERs of ORBIS will be especially responsible to ensure that ESRs research will be fruitful and that results are either exploited commercially or made accessible to the public.