The CONSIDER project, as part of the Science in Society aspect of FP7, undertakes research that will affect policy and further European goals. It is therefore of central importance that the research findings formulated and synthesised in WPs 1 (Civil Society Organisation Participation in Research Governance), WP2 (The practice of CSO participation) and WP 3 (Model of CSO participation) are translated into manageable and applicable guidelines that allow stakeholders to improve their processes of engaging CSOs in research. This requires the development of simple to use ICT tools to guide users through guidelines and findings.
Work package 4 will ensure that the research is conducted with a view to this aim. It will translate research results into guidelines and ICT tools in collaboration with the most important stakeholders and assess the usefulness and ease of use of the resulting guidelines with a view to optimising the wider uptake of project results.
CONSIDER research needs to be conducted in a way that will render it amenable to practical policy guidelines It is therefore important that this requirement of practical relevance is injected across the CONSIDER project early in the research phase. The development of guidelines will involve a large number of Associates, some of whom will be policy stakeholders.
The CONSIDER Associates will be organised through a virtual Network of Associates. Participation in this network is open to any interested organisations and individuals. Benefits of joining the network are listed here. To sign up, get on the email list, be included in the list of Associates and gain access to further information, please click here.
Such involvement has already happened with the first CSO workshop on the 20th of June 2012 in Porto, Portugal following an earlier event involving other stakeholders at the Living Knowledge Conference in Bonn in May 2012. WP4 will be using CSO input through workshops, EU Presidency events and other stakeholder engagement.
There are two main deliverables under WP4 and these include D4.1 – Guidelines handbook and D4.2 – Expert workshop proceedings which have been alluded to above. Both of these are central to the formulation of the eventual guidelines. As covered in the deliverable timeline, D4.1 is due in month 34 and will be a collaboration between DMU and SPIA. The expectation is that each WP, especially 1 to 3 will contribute what they think are relevant guidelines as their WPs progress (details of this in terms of how each WP can contribute and related others can be found in the deliverable timeline D.4.1). D4.2 under the leadership of EUCLID Network will cover workshop outcomes. As there are about 10 workshops over the life-span of the project, the expectation is that the reports that are borne out of each Workshop will be fed into the guidelines as and when they are completed. This will ensure a steady development of the guidelines up until month 34.
WP4 works closely together with WP 5 (Dissemination and Awareness Raising) to ensure that guidelines form a central aspect of dissemination.