An excellent dissemination and communication plan transforms your Horizon project from a promising proposal into a high-impact success story. Funded by the European Commission, Horizon projects demand transparency, stakeholder engagement, and measurable impact. Below, we analyze common practices across EU‐funded consortia and outline a step-by-step guide for writing a plan that resonates with funders, partners, and end users alike.
1. Define Clear Objectives and Audiences
Successful plans begin with specific, measurable objectives aligned to Horizon’s expected impacts—whether it’s advancing policy, driving market uptake, or raising public awareness. Map your target audiences into tiers:
- Policy makers & regulators
- Industry partners & SMEs
- Academic & research communities
- End-users and civil society
Tailor messages to each group: policy briefs for officials, technical workshops for researchers, infographics and social media content for the broader public.
2. Leverage a Multi-Channel Mix
Horizon projects often underutilize the full spectrum of dissemination channels. A balanced mix should include:
- Dedicated project website with SEO-optimized pages and a news feed
- Social media campaigns on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and other social media with regular content calendars
- E-newsletters segmented by stakeholder type for ongoing updates
- Webinars, workshops, and conference presentations to foster two-way dialogue
- Open data repositories and publications in open-access journals to maximize research visibility
3. Develop Compelling Key Messages
Craft a concise elevator pitch and adapt it into key messages that highlight your project’s novelty, societal relevance, and expected impacts. Each work package should have its own thematic message, ensuring coherence across deliverables. Visual assets, branded templates, infographics, short videos, reinforce these messages and enhance shareability.
4. Establish a Governance and Timeline
Assign clear roles and responsibilities within the consortium:
- Communication lead (oversees strategy and quality control)
- Dissemination manager (coordinates publications and events)
- WP leaders (provide technical inputs and ensure alignment)
Incorporate a detailed timeline with milestones—launch website by Month 3, first policy brief by Month 6, midterm workshop in Month 12, final impact report by Month 30—to demonstrate realistic planning and facilitate progress tracking.
5. Integrate Monitoring and KPIs
Embed quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure reach, engagement, and impact. Examples include:
- Website traffic and download counts
- Social media impressions and engagement rates
- Number of attendees at events and webinars
- Citations of publications and references in policy documents
- Stakeholder feedback surveys
Use periodic reviews to refine activities, address gaps, and report to the EC with evidence of impact.
6. Embrace Open Science and Sustainability
Horizon projects thrive when they commit to open access and long-term sustainability. Ensure datasets adhere to FAIR principles, deposit publications in recognized repositories, and plan for post-project maintenance of digital tools or platforms. This fosters transparency, widens your audience, and cements your project’s legacy beyond the funding period.
7. Showcase Success Stories and Policy Impact
Illustrative case studies—early-stage pilot results, beneficiary testimonials, policy uptake examples—bring your dissemination plan to life. Highlight how your findings have informed EU regulations, inspired pilot implementations in industry, or engaged citizen scientists. Storytelling humanizes your technical work and appeals to both professional and public audiences.
8. Transform Technical Language into Accessible Content
The translation of complex technical and administrative language from Horizon Europe projects into clear, understandable content is not just beneficial—it’s essential for maximizing project impact and meeting EU accessibility standards. The European Commission’s commitment to plain language principles reflects a broader understanding that effective communication requires bridging the gap between specialist knowledge and public comprehension.
The Communication Barrier Challenge
Horizon projects often struggle with what experts call “EU project speak”—a specialized language filled with acronyms, technical jargon, and administrative terminology that creates barriers for non-expert audiences. Terms like “dissemination,” “exploitation,” “work packages,” and “deliverables” may be familiar to project coordinators but remain opaque to industry partners, policymakers, and end-users who could benefit from project outcomes.
Research shows that technical jargon can reduce comprehension by up to 40% among non-specialist audiences, while plain language versions of the same content increase understanding by 60%. This communication gap directly impacts project effectiveness, limiting stakeholder engagement, reducing policy uptake, and constraining the broader societal impact that Horizon funding aims to achieve.
EU Guidelines for Plain Language Communication
The European Commission has established comprehensive guidelines for clear communication, emphasizing that plain language builds trust and helps people find information quickly, understand their rights and responsibilities, and participate in democratic processes. These guidelines specifically encourage authors across all EU departments to replace jargon with everyday words, cut unnecessary content, and focus on what readers need to know.
The Commission’s approach follows ten key principles: think before you write, focus on the reader, structure your document clearly, keep it short and simple, structure sentences logically, use verbs instead of nouns, prefer active to passive voice, be concrete rather than abstract, avoid jargon and abbreviations, and always revise and check your work. These principles directly apply to Horizon project communication, transforming technical outputs into accessible content.
Practical Transformation Strategies
Successful language transformation begins with audience analysis, understanding who needs your information and how they will use it. For Horizon projects, this typically involves creating multiple versions of the same content: technical reports for expert audiences, policy briefs for decision-makers, infographics for social media, and plain language summaries for general audiences.
Replace technical terminology with everyday equivalents: instead of “exploitation of project results,” use “putting research into practice”; instead of “dissemination activities,” use “sharing findings”; instead of “deliverables,” use “project outcomes” or “reports”. When technical terms are necessary, provide clear definitions and context that non-experts can understand.
Structure transformed content using the inverted pyramid approach, lead with the most important information, followed by supporting details. Use headings and subheadings to organize content, bullet points to highlight key information, and visual elements like infographics or videos to supplement text-based explanations.
Digital Accessibility and WCAG Compliance
Technical content transformation must also consider digital accessibility standards, particularly the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that ensure content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and applicable across different abilities and technologies. This includes using semantic HTML structures, providing alternative text for images, ensuring sufficient color contrast, and creating content that works effectively with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Plain language principles align directly with WCAG requirements for understandable content, creating synergies between accessibility compliance and effective communication. Simple sentence structures, clear headings, and logical information architecture benefit both users with disabilities and general audiences seeking quick access to project information.
Implementation Tools and Resources
The European Commission has developed AI-based tools specifically to support plain language transformation: WebText rewrites content in plain language with web-friendly formatting, while Accessible Text applies easy-to-read guidelines for comprehensive accessibility. These tools are available to public administrations, small businesses, academia, and NGOs, including Horizon project consortia.
Project teams should establish clear protocols for content transformation, including style guides that define approved plain language alternatives for common technical terms, templates for different content types (press releases, policy briefs, social media posts), and review processes that ensure consistency across all project communications. Regular training for project partners in plain language principles can improve communication effectiveness across the entire consortium. By following these best practices, defining precise objectives, leveraging diverse channels, crafting clear messages, instituting governance and KPIs, embracing open science principles, and transforming technical language into accessible content, you’ll create a dissemination and communication plan that not only satisfies Horizon requirements but also maximizes your project’s societal and scientific impact. The investment in clear, accessible communication pays dividends through improved stakeholder engagement, enhanced policy uptake, and broader public understanding of your project’s contributions to European innovation and competitiveness.