OZ 2011/3

74 ORGANIZACIJA ZNANJA 2011, LETN. 16, ZV. 3 the dissemination scheme to be (continually) adapted to current situations. The dissemination scheme is considered a template of what is to be presented, by whom and when. Dissemination actions specified in this way do not need special management because each project partner knows exactly what to do and when. However, the dissemination scheme and communication plan enable monitoring the dissemination actions and perceiving deviations. The project management is to propose necessary corrections in case of deviations. CONCLUSIONS There is a variety of views of what dissemination is (ranging from presenting research results in professional journals and at international conferences to complete marketing of results). Both views are extreme and miss the intuitive goal of dissemination. Presentations of research results in professional journals and at international conferences reach only a limited number of those, potentially influenced by exploitation of the results (and due to ever increasing specialisation of knowledge can also miss other professions that may have an interest in the results). On the other hand, many research results (e. g. technologies) are not suitable for immediate exploitation. A lot needs to be done before (e. g. evaluation, further development, testing). And even then the exploitation of the results should remain under control. Skipping these steps can have an immense negative and long lasting impact. No matter how the research is funded, we can speculate that the research is carried out for the benefit of the society. Estimating the potential impact of the project on the society can go far beyond the capacities of the project team. History of science and technology reveals that the evolution of our societies could have taken very different paths from the existing ones if scientific and technological discoveries would have been treated differently. This is why it is important that the information about scientific and technological discoveries should be made widely available and should be suitably arranged for target audiences. It is unreasonable to expect that a project team could do all the dissemination to potentially interested parties. However, there are two things that cannot be avoided: presenting the results to the professional communities most qualified to evaluate them, and providing detailed and understandable information about the results to the society. In this way, two important feedbacks can be created: one from the professional communities and the other from the society, first having a potential to evaluate the results, the second having the potential to make a holistic estimation of the potential impact on the society. Information about the results can activate other professional communities that carry out complementary research to provide valuable feedback. Not all projects can have the same scope of influence (e. g. local, global), but, the above presented pattern scales accordingly. This pattern is not an all encompassing pattern (e. g. a group of stakeholders may require more influential position in evaluating project results), but, it is a foundation for a more productive exploitation of research results. Systematization of the dissemination assures that target audiences are addressed directly and provides access of the society to all research results by means of an information source (e. g. a website). Visibility of project information sources could be significantly enhanced by funding agencies providing independent long term indices of funded projects with links to project information sources (including links to archived projects documents). We have learned that the refinement of a concept broadens comprehension. Naïve comprehension of dissemination at the beginning developed, with refinement, into more mature comprehension, which enables to better serve the needs of target audiences and the society. This shows that sticking to an established comprehension of a concept may prevent us from quality results. Modelling and systematization of the dissemination process were essentially driven by our desire and need to communicate information and knowledge about research results to target audiences. This situation is not the same as in quality assurance where requirements to be met are known in advance. However, based on the results obtained we can be confident that the needs of target audiences and the society’s expectations can be met better. The presented systematization and proposed implementation of the dissemination is not the design. It is merely a systematized presentation of initial and evolving knowledge about the topic under observation acquired during the process of systematization. Thus, the systematization is basically a means for completing and structuring knowledge about the topic under observation. It may turn out that additional systematization cycle (or cycles) is necessary before knowledge about the topic under observation can be considered sufficiently complete. What is missing, is the estimation that the proposed system can be considered fit for purpose. There are more ways to come to such an estimation, perhaps the safest one is to build a simple system based on the Maksimiljan Gerkeš: DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE ...