In Horizon 2020 multi-actor projects such as EUREKA (www.h2020eureka.eu) workshops are important for gaining input from end users, as well as communicating and disseminating the knowledge that is built in the project. Physical face-to-face project workshops are moving online because of increased concern about the impact of international travel, as well as restrictions on human movement due to COVID–19. But what are the advantages of online workshops, what does a good workshop look like and what aspects are critical to its success?

End user personas and journeys are a critical tool for product development, they enable practitioners to understand who they are designing for as well as getting to the core challenges and opportunities that the end user experiences. Without understanding the end user it is possible that practitioners design applications without fully understanding the system complexities, problems and what the end users actually need.

Communication and dissemination strategies are critical for ensuring effective knowledge transfer to the agricultural community as well as being mandatory by the European Commission for Horizon 2020 projects. A key factor for successful knowledge transfer is understanding the preferences and habits of the agricultural community in how they search for and obtain new knowledge.

Knowledge can be obtained from a wide variety of sources and in a wide range of formats. Effective knowledge exchange is critical for the advancement of the agricultural sector and the strengthening of knowledge exchange within the so-called Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) of EU Member States has become an increasingly important objective of EU agricultural policy. The EUREKA project (www.h2020eureka.eu) aims to help strengthen knowledge exchange through the development of an online, open-source EU agricultural knowledge reservoir.

The EUREKA project (www.h2020eureka.eu) aims to help strengthen agricultural knowledge exchange in EU Member States through the development of an online knowledge reservoir called the FarmBook. An open-source e-platform is a good tool for the development of such a knowledge base and can improve connections between two distinct user groups: multi-actor project partners and multi-actor end-users (farmers, foresters, advisors).

The EUREKA project has analysed the communication practices of over 100 MAPs funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme and identified numerous good practices.

The greatest challenge is the collection of information and content (‘knowledge objects’) in heterogeneous types and formats from a range of disparate sources and integrate them into a single storage space.

Leveraging the full power of knowledge requires it to be conveyed in ways that make its exploitation feasible by both humans and machines.

A knowledge community represents a network of people with a common interest who work together to create and share knowledge on a particular topic or issue. A project with its partners is a typical example. But what happens after a project is finished?

The importance of developing common goals amongst partners for maximising the impact of multi-actor projects

Effective communication between partners is essential good practice to develop meaningful impact indicators for multi-actor projects

Which social media channels are most effective for helping research and innovation projects to reach their target audiences?

It may not seem like a big decision, but choosing the ‘right’ title for your project is very important. The project name forms part of the first impression that those outside the project will have when coming into contact with it.

Websites are central to the communication and dissemination activities of most multi-actor projects. But how to enhance their effectiveness and impact?

Multi-actor projects can be complex, and good internal project communication is a vital component of project success.

It is becoming less common for projects to have discussions face-to-face, but to meet instead virtually online. This meeting format was necessary in recent years due to the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19 but is now increasingly popular for many other reasons.

The name of the ‘EU FarmBook’ is clearly based upon a well-known social media platform, but how to generally go about creating and selecting the name for a platform?

A webinar is a powerful, low-cost tool that can help achieve a project’s goals. In order to organise a high-quality webinar, it is recommended to follow these basic steps/rules.

The EUREKA project identified these clusters of tangible knowledge objects produced by MA projects.

The EUREKA project studied MA projects and identified these best practices for co-creation and co-ownership processes.

Scientific results are usually presented in the form of a scientific article with a typical structure and a very detailed and scholarly description of the rationale, methodology, presentation and interpretation. This usually makes them so specific that they are rarely read by farmers, technicians, advisors or the general public.

Surveys are a key tool for multi-actor projects, especially those aiming to address the needs of end-users. But how to create and distribute a good survey?

The EUREKA project analysed a total of 129 Horizon 2020 multi-actor projects (including thematic networks) in terms of their partnership composition and leadership.

Horizon projects and Operational Groups do not know of each other's existence. How can they cooperate better?

How do we organise that Horizon projects and Operational Groups share knowledge better?

A well-designed Project content management systems helps to communicate with end-users and to implement and achieve project objectives.

Feedback collection tools are very important on the project website as an effective way to obtain useful information on project activities, communicate with end-users, get their reactions to the information provided etc.

Social media with its wide-scale reach and rapid information sharing, can play a defining role in project planning, execution, and implementation.

A multi-actor approach in research and innovation projects is about engaging end-users and practitioners to make the best use of complementary types of knowledge.

One hundred and twenty-nine multi-actor projects of the H2020 programme were analysed in terms of the involvement and role of different actors in the creation of data and knowledge.

The open-access policy has spread rapidly and has greatly influenced the scientific environment, especially publishing.

This abstract summarises practical experiences gained in the early development phase of the online knowledge reservoir platform, “EU Farmbook”.

The power and impact of using good quality images in communication are indisputable and increasingly understood by experts working in the multi-actor project community.

As the world becomes more connected, it becomes ever more important to make critical knowledge and information available in multiple languages. Fortunately, advances in automatic translation now make this much more feasible.

Puzzled by the EIP-AGRI? Read on for a quick introduction.

There are several countries which need support to better connect with research and innovation at EU level.

The EUREKA project studied over 100 EU multi-actor projects incl. analysing the main knowledge categories of projects in the livestock and permanent grassland sector based on the domain ontology of AGROVOC.

Actors and stakeholders within the EIP-AGRI ‘landscape’ are searching for easily accessible and user-friendly knowledge.

Many of the lessons learnt during the EUREKA project are of interest and relevance to the developers of other similar platforms at a national or sectoral level.

When entering the development stage of a platform such as the EU FarmBook, developers will have to take decisions that can significantly impact the end result.

A key element of the design process of such a platform is user-testing.

An important aspect of creating such an agricultural knowledge platform is gathering data from numerous sources and transforming it to become more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).

Creating a PRD not only ensures alignment within the current design process but also ensures that other parties can use the same processes to recreate (and/or adapt) the platform.

In order to give confidence to users (e.g. researchers, advisors, farmers, foresters etc.) and to make a knowledge reservoir attractive for the distribution and storage of research outputs it is necessary to establish proper governance and apply some best practices.

A series of thematic working groups (TWGs) was organised in the EUREKA project to validate the outputs of a representative sample of MAPs.

Are you planning to develop knowledge objects for your project? Here are a few tips to make them Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR).

A key component of the FAIR data principles is the metadata which is attached to knowledge objects (documents, spreadsheets, videos, podcasts etc.) to make them easy to find, reuse and manage.

Indexing the digital communication and dissemination material, created by a Multi-Actor Project (MAP), by using an appropriate subject category is not a trivial task.

The results of Multi-Actor Projects can become available by using a range of digital material types. However, making decisions about the material type to use is not an easy task.

The EUREKA project has brought together good practices from over 100 Horizon 2020 MA projects in a ‘Compendium of Good Practice.