How to get your message through? Designing an Impactful Knowledge transfer plan in a European Project

Abstract. Academic research is largely characterized by scientific projects striving to advance the understanding in their respective fields. Financial support is often subjected to the fulfilment of certain requirements, such as a fully developed knowledge transfer plan and dissemination strategy. But the evaluation of these activities and their impact is rarely an easy path to clarity and comprehensiveness, considering the different expectations from project officers and funding agencies, dissemination activities and objectives, and so on. With this paper, based on the experience of the management and outreach team of the EU-H2020 APPLICATE project, we aim to shed light on the challenging journey towards impact assessment of knowledge transfer activities by presenting a methodology for impact planning and monitoring in the context of a collaborative and international research project. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluations and indicators developed in four years of the project, this paper represents an attempt to build a common practice for project managers and coordinators and establish a baseline for the development of a shared strategy.


with expertise in communication and outreach strategies, co-production of climate services and training in research." In my opinion, it would also be of interest to elaborate more on how much of the activities within WP7 were self-directed by the team vs. prescribed by the funding agencies. The authors describe how important it is for the projects to develop plans to address the four focus areas of KT and ideally, funding agencies can give clear direction and support from the start to help with formulating plans and how to implement best practices that lead to project success. I believe it will be crucial as more and more large-scale scientific projects are created for the funding agencies to sufficiently support project management activities and also give more guidance and support for impact assessments and defining project success.
Thanks for highlighting this point, which is very crucial for our analysis. The relation with the funding agencies, especially in the context of European projects, is fundamental and should be pivotal in developing a successful strategy of impact assessment. We briefly mention how some of the activities and tracking methods have been suggested by the funding agency, but we can expand on where the support could be stronger and which aspect would need more structure.

Reply on RC2
Thank you for the thorough review of our paper and for the useful suggestions made. We will address the comments individually and provide our ideas for how to implement them in the text.
I encourage authors to re-read the MS and consider shortening / streamlining. Title: The title specifically mentions EU projects. Is there anything that can be done to make the findings relevant for non-Eu funded projects?
The title mentions EU-projects specifically because the project used as reference, i.e. APPLICATE, is a European project and specifically experienced the dynamics and structures that are typical of a EU-funded project. While many aspects can be applied to other contexts and be "universalized" to research-projects in general, we thought it useful to specify the kind of context that we are navigating as some of the structures and institutions we mention refer specifically to the EU-funded experience.
Abstract: If space allows, considering adding 1-2 sentences at the end of the abstract text summarizing key messages and findings to make the abstract more focused and useful.
Thank you for suggesting this. We plan to add a summarizing sentence at the end of the abstract: "Our experience found that an assessment strategy should be included in the planning of the project as a key framing step, that the individual project's goals and objectives should drive the definition and assessment of impact, and that the researchers involved are crucial to implement a project's outreach strategy."

Line 44 -Remove double parenthesis
The correction will appear in the final version of the manuscript.
Line 48 -Should it be "Indicators" rather than "Indications"? It should indeed be indicators, it will be implemented in the final version of the manuscript.

Line 49 -"Roadmap" instead of "Road map"?
The correction will be implemented in the final version of the manuscript.
Line 57 -As a person not familiar with the project structure, I feel like it's time to introduce the structure oof the project at this stage, incl. a figure/graphic summarizing linkages between different WPs, User Group, and teams (KT, Communication, User Engagement, Education, Clustering, etc. ) This point was raised by the other referee as well, and it is a very valid one. We will add a figure illustrating the project structure (see attached).
Line 63 -Stakeholders and users are mentioned in this paragraph, but the definition and clarification comes much later . Consider defining both already here. Thanks for the suggestion, we will move up the definition for clarity.

Line 104out of curiosity, was there a coordination between different WPs when it comes to dissemination of results and engagement with community?
The team within WP7 was responsible for planning and coordinating dissemination and outreach efforts directed to all target groups and were in charge of involving the other WPs and their researchers in these efforts.

Line 108could please provide several examples of "targeted activities"?
We are adding a sentence to elaborate on the term "targeted activities": "Targeted activities included dedicated meetings and workshops with users to update on the progress and results of the project, policy events to engage with policymakers within EU institutions, press releases to appear in news outlets addressing non-scientific public." Line 108 -Is the word "team" missing after the word "… dissemination"? Yes, the correction will appear in the final version of the manuscript.
Line 135how were policy briefs communicated? Policy briefs have been introduced during policy meetings organized by the EU and the project as well as during workshops like the PPP-SERA workshop in the framework of the Polar Prediction Project. The documents are still available on the project's website for download. We added a clarification on the text as well that will appear in the final version of the manuscript.

Line 146how do you define "pro-active"?
It is linked with the co-production approach that has been applied by the stakeholder engagement team, and refers to the active engagement of users as stakeholders in the evaluation and development of climate services for example, asked to give feedback and contribute to the development of climate products and services that respond to the actual needs of the community.
Line 160 -NGOs and public sector are not mentioned among UG members. Was it the case? If so, was it intentional? I am just curious here.
The idea was for the UG to be a small team to facilitate discussion and interaction with the coordination team and the stakeholder engagement team and so a limited number of members were invited based on their background, expertise and role in the Arctic community. The public sector (local community managers) and few NGO's (environmental conservation) have been approached and invited to join the UG but invitations have either been declined or not followed on as they did not bring the level of engagement required for the project.
Line 161word "external" is used twice We will implement the correction in the final version of the manuscript.

Line 165please give 1-2 examples here?
For example, an exercise with the UG involved defining which environmental parameters (e.g., sea-ice extent, number of frost days) would be useful for them to know in advance to plan business operations (e.g., shipping, reindeer herding). It will be added in the final version.
Line 167either "data" or "Information"? Yes, the correction will appear in the final version of the manuscript. (2020), I encourage authors to add 1-2 sentences key outcomes of the survey. We added the following sentence:

Line 196even though readers can check Schneider & Fugmann
"Among the end results of the courses, it is interesting to highlight that in every case, students and participants really appreciated the syllabus and content of the trainings, in particular the combination of theoretical and practical aspects, while lessons learned were mostly of logistical nature, such as improvements in the organization of the event." Line 214consider adding 1-2 examples of clustering activities here or earlier in this section. Clustering activities in this case were related to the cooperation with other projects from the EU polar cluster, for example participating in each other's project meetings, by organizing outreach and policy events with them and by consolidating cooperation with other projects beyond Europe by coordinating papers and initiatives in the framework of the Polar Prediction Project, among others. We listed them in this paragraph, but we will consider expanding and add more specific examples.
Lines 217-220this part highlights the challenge of impact tracking during the timeline of the project. The definition of impact in this work (and project) is different compared to the one mentioned in Lines 22-23. With the definition of impact by the EU commissions, I wonder, if the impact can be fully assessed during the project timeline. Can authors think of a recommendation for the funding agencies here? This is a discussion that has been going on with the funding agencies also during the final review. What we focus on this paper are outreach activities and their evolution during the project timeline, and this is something we believe is possible to assess, with the help of a common strategy and approach. We did not expand on all those impacts that go beyond the final date of the project, simply because, with the project finishing relatively recently, these are still largely unforeseen. However, it is a point that needs attention and is one of the most critical aspects that have been debated, and for which a clearer guidance from the funding