Dissemination, exploitation and communication

The three words are not synonyms and the grant agreement treats them differently. DISSEMINATION is making the results public to those who can use them: publications, conferences, standards bodies, open datasets. EXPLOITATION is using the results yourself, commercially or otherwise, including licensing them to others. COMMUNICATION is telling the wider public that the project exists and why it matters.

Proposals routinely blur all three into one paragraph containing a website, a Twitter account and a plan to publish four papers, and lose points on Impact for it. Evaluators are looking for three distinct plans with distinct audiences, distinct channels and distinct measures of success.

Communication has obligations attached. Project outputs must display the EU emblem and a funding statement, along with a disclaimer that the views are the authors' own. This applies to publications, presentations, websites and infrastructure, and it is checked at review.

Exploitation is the one with real teeth. There is an obligation to exploit the results, a requirement to report on how, and the granting authority may intervene where nothing happens. "We will publish papers" is dissemination, not exploitation, and stating it as such tells the reviewer the consortium has not thought about what happens after month 36.

The plan should name people and dates rather than intentions. Which partner will licence what, to whom, by when; which standard body, which committee, which meeting; who owns the website after the project ends. Impact scores reward specificity here more reliably than ambition.