Description
PLATONplus was a Support Action aiming to:
- Communicate EU socio-economic research programmes results and assets to policy makers, Civil Society Organisations and to business communities across Europe, and
- Demonstrate ways of collaboration and participation to EU SHH programmes and bring into contact socio-economic researchers and researchers from other disciplines.
The ultimate goal was to exploit horizontally the competences of European researchers in the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) field for the benefit of European research, achieving integration of the SSH research in the technology-oriented research under the 7th Framework Programme. The partners:
- Examined, assessed and classified (mapped) SSH relevant EU research programmes and results that can potentially contribute to the further improvement – advancement of technology-oriented EU research programmes (e.g. FP7 ICT, Nanotech, biotech, agro-food, etc.).
- Created a pool of SSH relevant projects and results (e.g. report, studies, methodologies, etc.) that could be applied in or be of value for FP7 technology-oriented research projects
- ‘Popularized’ SSH relevant EU research programmes, results and topics by
providing tangible examples; developing several policy-oriented publications; mapping SSH results & areas to facilitate ‘navigation’ of non-SSH users, making SSH integration more friendly to non SSH researchers; and organising Policy Dialogue meetings in all partners’ countries.
To increase the impact and added value of SSH-related research results, PLATON+:
- examined and determined the role / contribution that SSH researchers can have throughout the lifecycle of a non-SSH research project;
- supported actively the participation of SSH research organizations and researchers to non-SSH research projects and to SSH-related projects under non-SSH themes of FP7; and
engaged non-SSH experts & other organisations, such as SME groupings (i.e. associations, clusters, chambers, etc) more actively in the European SSH research.
Q-PLAN responsibilities
- Responsible for capacity building, training courses and policy dialogue events
- Overall responsible for the organisation of European dissemination and policy-related events within the context of major international conferences
- Development of the web-portal, partner search tools and a Database with targeted actors.
- Responsible for the provision of 20 SSH Fact Sheets (analyzing 20 different SSH topics)
- EU-funded technical assistance and institutional capacity building
- Public promotion of EU programmes, dissemination and EU visibility of events.
- Information and training on EU research programmes to more than 300 research organisations and SMEs (incl. preparation of material)
- Organisation of major European Networking Events to facilitate networking participation to EU research programmes
- Assistance in SSH and non-SSH proposal preparation for various EU and EU RTD programmes
- Support, capacity building towards FP7 to key national RTD actors