PLATON Newsletter

5 th and FINAL issue: January 2008


Issued by: PLATON consortium

PLATON Newsletter contains useful information for those interested in participating in EU research projects in Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and/or wish to exploit the research results in this field.

PLATON supports the participation of SMEs / SME groupings in SSH research and demonstrates the importance that SSH research can have in the long-term competitiveness of SMEs.

This email is designed to be best viewed as HTML page. If your email package cannot view HTML content, please click the following link to view the full graphics version on our website: http://www.platonproject.net/newsletters.php.

The PLATON project Consortium apologizes for possible multiple receipts of the newsletter. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information.

1. Introduction

New year marks the successful completion of a pioneering project!

Project PLATON - October 2005 to December 2007 .

The 27-month journey of PLATON project has been successfully completed. The project funding period ended last December. Within its duration the project partners have supported SMEs and SME groupings to participate in socio-economic research projects under FP6 and mainly FP7.Read the full text.

2. Project information

  • Post-project continuation of PLATON activities

    Two main activities / type of services will continue:

    1. On-line partner searches and submission of Collaboration Profiles through the project web-tools.

    2. Further support for successful participation in European socio-economic research

    Read the full text.

  • Post-project continuation under PLATONplus project
    PLATON most successful activities are being updated and upgraded under a new project (PLATONplus, funded under FP7-SSH), while new activities will be implemented. More details will be provided in March 2008. PLATONplus aims to: Read more.

3. European News

  • Europe's 'collective memory' to go online
    The Commission is developing an online library with scanned European books, printed documents, photos, manuscripts and sheet music in order to make them available for a broad public. The move follows an initiative by France . Read more.

4. PLATON News and Events

  • PLATON dissemination workshop: «Innovation & Socio-economic research for SMEs: Experiences & Future Initiatives»
    Tailored services provided to individual SMEs that are carefully selected seem to have best results. In parallel, the successful participation of SMEs in European research programmes is heavily affected by the level of networking between them and experienced research organizations and large enterprises.
    The above consist of some of the conclusions drawn / confirmed during the final
    dissemination workshop of PLATON project «Innovation & Socio-economic research for SMEs: Experiences & Future Initiatives» (Brussels, 17/12/2007). Overall, 48 participants from 17 countries attended and contributed to the event. Read more.

  • PLATON project overall results
    Being a pioneer PLATON has been exceptionally successful. The project has developed and operated an infrastructure that is available after the end of the project, while during its implementation has provided valuable support to a large number of organizations - interested parties. The partners of PLATON met and exceeded by far the project's main targets, by expanding their collaboration with other project stakeholders such as the European Commission, the network of the National Contact Points for socio-economic research, key researchers in the area as well as other similar / complementary projects and networks.More specifically:Read more.


5. Highlights

  • Results from the 1st deadline of FP7-SSH (10 May 2007)
    The first SSH call, launched on the 22nd of December 2006 , has been the first step of a long path that will last 7 years. The call had a fixed deadline ( 10 May 2007 ) and a one-stage submission procedure has been used. 531 proposals were submitted. The 51% (270 proposals) of the submitted proposals passed all the evaluation thresholds. The overall success rate of the 1st deadline is 12,2 % (calculated on the 531 submitted proposals). Read more.



If you wish to contribute on matters pertinent to the PLATON project, please forward any
relevant material to info@platonproject.net .



"Disclaimer: The contents of this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the PLATON Consortium. The information in this Newsletter is provided as an information tool of PLATON Project and does not purport to be comprehensive. The PLATON Consortium makes this information available without warranty of any kind. It does not accept responsibility for the validity or completeness of any data contained in it, or for the consequences arising from the use of such data. The PLATON Consortium shall not be liable for damages or other claims and demands arising out of the use of the data."