FAIR-CT96-1904 NF-2000: Non-Food Agro-Industrial Dissemination (NF-AIRID) Through Paper and Electronic Means - Final Report

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Website: www.nf-2000.org
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	Proposal No:	FAIR-CT96-1904
	Date Prepared:	December 1998
	Source:	Second Annual Progress Report

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Second Annual Progress Report

I. Objectives

The main objective is to collect and collate information relevant to the non-food agro-industrial research and demonstration activities supported by the European Commission (EC), as well as that from other sources relating to non-food uses of agricultural crops and forest products. This information is disseminated to the target audience (those to whom it would be of particular benefit, especially SMEs) in the form of items, thus optimising the return from the investment made in this area under the Framework Programmes. The specific objectives are to:

1. bring the results of non-food projects from the AIR and FAIR programmes to the attention of potential users;
2. attract new participants to future programmes (Fifth Framework) and thus strengthen the technical and industrial content;
3. help avoid duplication between national funded work and EC funded activities, or even duplication between activities funded by different parts of EC programmes;
4. help identify areas where research is needed, or indeed where further research might be unnecessary;
5. to encourage the formation of new partnerships between agriculture and industry, as well as between research groups for future projects;
6. provide feedback to the Commission concerning the types of organisations involved in non-food and their activities and interests in terms of raw materials used or required, products of present or potential market value and technologies used;
7. investigate the potential of all types of electronic information dissemination (CD-ROM, email, World Wide Web) in such information collection, collation and dissemination and to compared costs, speed and impact with that of similar activities based on conventional paper-based mail and fax;
8. coordinate activities and/or collaborate with other non-food information-based concerted actions and dissemination networks funded by the Commission in such a way as to maximise overall impact, avoid duplication and facilitate development of electronic information dissemination.

II. Description of Work

The objectives continue to be achieved in collaboration with a network of nominated organisations (National Representatives) based throughout the European Union, plus observers from Hungary and Poland, through an annual workshop, plus continuing correspondence, mainly by email. The workshop focuses on the mechanisms, impact and effectiveness of the information collection, collation and dissemination activities, rather than technical aspects of particular areas of non-food crop production and use.

At the first annual workshop it was decided to:

• include the NF-2000 database on the website in a secure (password protected) area: The password ordinators to collect statistics about the organisations using the database. The database went on-line on
  1 January 1998. All new and existing on-line registrants were sent a username and password.
• replace the existing leaflet publicising items with a quarterly newsletter and to only produce items in HTML only: This electronic version could be printed to produce the posted or faxed version – removing duplication of effort involved in producing both an electronic and a paper version. Material was edited to a common format and standard of presentation and used to produce new Items for the NF-2000 database. New Items were added to the NF-2000 database and uploaded onto the website as soon as they were available. Online registrants viewed the HTML files on the website, or were sent them by post, fax or email by their National Representative (NR)

As a result, during Year 2, four issues of the newsletter were mailed to all postal registrants and an electronic version of each was added to the web site.

Interested parties could register with the network by post, fax, e-mail or via the on-line registration form available on the NF-2000 web site. When registering they could choose:

• to receive the Newsletter by post via their NR
• to access the on-line database (in which case they are provided with a username and password)
• to receive an e-mail listing new information items available

Electronic registrants (e-mail and on-line) could also choose to receive the Newsletter by post.

New Items added to the database during the Second Year included details of FAIR, JOULE and THERMIE projects. Commission staff supplied most of the information, largely in the form of contractor’s project summary reports in hard copy. Further information was supplied by NRs, Registrants and other contacts, in hard copy or by e-mail (either directly or by completion of the form supplied on the web-site). This form could also be used to add information to the partners database that forms part of the master database. Information on disk or via e-mail is used directly, whilst paper reports are scanned using character recognition software.

One of the key objectives (objective g) is to evaluate the relative merit of the alternative dissemination routes: postal, fax, e-mail, on-line (web site) and CD-ROM. This objective is accomplished by comparing these various dissemination mechanisms. Feedback from National Representatives and registrants (both as direct comments and from monitoring requests for information) has been used to compare each route.

At the second annual workshop, held in Gmunden, Austria in October 1998 it was agreed:

• Since Items are now easily accessible on the website, very few Items are being requested by post, reducing the workload of NRs. Therefore, in Year 3, NRs should concentrate their efforts on publicising NF-2000.
• An on-line partners form should be created, encouraging registrants to share materials and to indicate their interest in participating in future research programmes including the Fifth Framework Programme.
• Password protection should be removed from the site. Sufficient statistics have been collected on on-line registrants, and it was felt that, since the main purpose of the network was to disseminate information, the site should be unrestricted and open to all. This would also give additional information on the use of the site.

In addition, Poland was welcomed to the Network as an observer.

III. State of Progress

The partners form was included for the first time in both the posted and electronic versions of the December 1998 Newsletter. Partners' details will be included in future Items. The password protection was removed on 1 January 1999. Issue 2 of the CD-ROM will be available from the end of February 1999 and will include updated information on all relevant FAIR, JOULE, THERMIE, AIR and ECLAIR projects. The database continues to be updated on a regular basis and is available on this website.

IV. Achievements

The number of separate pieces of information disseminated by NF-2000 rose by 600% from 20,000 in Year 1 to 120,000 in Year 2 (Figure 1).

This includes dissemination of newsletters, web pages relating directly to research, etc. (such as project results, organisation and contact details), paper-based information (newsletters and information items), CD-ROMs, books, etc. However, it excludes specific replies to queries, etc and general information about NF-2000). The number of items requested by post has dropped significantly in all countries. This is probably because Registrants have realised that they can obtain the information more quickly and easily from the web site.

Figure 1: Dissemination of information (excluding NF-2000 publicity material) by the NF-2000 Network

The total number of items disseminated by post was 463, compared with 4140 downloaded from the internet. Although all items were disseminated, in general, items relating to energy, wood, wastes and the energy research programmes were least popular, while the most popular items related to essential and vegetable oils, fibres, national and agricultural research programmes (particularly the Fifth Framework Programme FP5), crops, textiles, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals and higher added value products (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Popularity of Items within specific categories or topics

The number of distinct machines (PCs, networks, etc) accessing the site has increased steadily, doubling from 74 per week on average in 1997 to 140 in 1998. Users throughout Europe are regularly accessing the web site (Figure 3), with the maximum number of separate domains (accessing machines) in one week rising to 327 (compared with 154 in 1997).

Figure 3: Registrants throughout Europe access the NF-2000 website on a regular basis

To encourage registrants to access the web site and to inform on-line registrants of modifications and additions to the site, a number of sets of emails are regularly sent to registrants with email addresses, (including members of the Commission). This occurs when a new Newsletter is produced or major additions/changes are made to the site. Regular emailing resulted in a marked increase in the number of files downloaded (hits - Figure 4). In addition, there was an underlying exponential growth in the number of hits from users in Europe.

Figure 4: Number of files downloaded (hits) from the NF-2000 website by users in Europe (4 week moving average)

The total use (number of files downloaded by each machine) of the site was compared with four main sectors: the European Union and Norway (but excluding Luxembourg – ie the countries represented by the Network Participants); other European countries; unknown – these include anyone who accessed the site anonymously, as well as people with .net, .com, .org and other similar extensions to their domain names; and non-Europe. It was seen that EU domain names used the site more than 5 times as much as those from other sectors (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Use of the NF-2000 web site (files downloaded per machine) on a regional basis (four-week moving average)

More than 5000 leaflets (including 3000 in German) describing the activities of NF-2000 have been distributed by post and at a number of exhibitions. An introduction to NF-2000 is available as a screen show on the web site in French, German, Greek, Italian, Hungarian and Spanish. The coordinators collaborated with a number of other Networks (ACTIN, IENICA, EECI, CTVO-NET, ICBT, etc) and organisations (MAFF - UK, BLT - AT, FNR - DE, etc.), as well as all FAIR coordinators, participating in and/or publicising their activities and establishing links. NF-2000 has been presented at 16 meetings and exhibitions throughout Europe. Articles have been included in a number of journals and trade magazines.

As a result of these publicity efforts and development of the web site, the rate of growth of registrations has increased as anticipated from 2000 to 3000 registrants (Figure 6 and Figure 7).

Figure 6: NF-2000: Growth in number of registrants

Figure 7: A number of publicity activities resulted in new NF-2000 Registrants

The number of postal registrants has increased by 17% from 1891 to 2208 (including 462 who are also on-line registrants), while the number of electronic registrants has increased by 480% from 215 to 1247. The average number of new registrants each month has increased from 26 in Year 1 to 77 in Year 2. Electronic registration has attracted more SMEs and fewer research institutes and universities on a percentage basis. The interests and activities of registrants (Figure 8) from throughout Europe (Figure 9) have continued to be very similar to those from NF-AIRID (AIR Project AIR3-CT94-2299) and the first year of NF-2000. Registrants with e-mail addresses have been e-mailed on a number of occasions to inform them of changes and additions to the web site. This consistently results in an increase in the use of the site.

Figure 8: The type of organisations registering with NF-2000

Figure 9: Postal (left) and On-line (right) registrants as a function of national population

The mechanism for paper-based dissemination has been simplified, so that information is processed more quickly and easily. This information was been added to the on-line database as it became available, thus enabling registrants to gain rapid access to new data. Four newsletters containing a total of 279 items have been distributed this year. 87% of these items related to relevant EC programmes and projects. The remainder described national programmes and projects, international and national organisations, publications and other sources of information. NF-2000 collated information for three catalogues covering all aspects of biomass energy, wood and renewable biomaterials. These are to be published by the Commission. New projects identified during this activity have been included in the 279 items mentioned above. All new information from the catalogues will be incorporated into the on-line database by mid-February 1999 and will be available in Issue 2 of the CD-ROM (containing more than 1000 information pages and 1700 contact pages – Figure 10) by the end of February 1999. Nearly all copies of the NF-AIRID book have been disseminated All copies of the CD-ROM (issue 1) have been disseminated to registrants

Figure 10: Content of NF-2000 Information Items produced in Year 2

The NF-2000 website is becoming established as a first point of investigation (central node) for those trying to find information related to non-food use of crops on the internet. The site can be searched by topic and the user can then link of to more than 360 other websites (including those for organisations, research projects, individuals, other databases and link sites, etc.).

The web site can be accessed at http://www.nf-2000.org and is updated regularly. It now contains more than 3000 separate pages. All new information items are presented as a series of discrete items on the web site that continue the existing numbering system (NFI/149 onwards). These are included with an electronic version of the Newsletter in a separate section of the on-line database. When an issue of the Newsletter is produced, items from the previous issue are incorporated into the main database. This has ensured that the site is current and enabled it to become a primary mechanism for the dissemination of non-food information to contractors. A large amount of information has been added to the NF-2000 on-line database (Figure 11) and website during the Second Year. However, the overall web site structure has not changed substantially since January 1998, giving a consistency of format for regular users.

Figure 11: New and updated information added to the NF-2000 Online Database during Year 2

V. Future Actions

• NF-2000 will continue to collect information and update the database on a regular basis during 1999.
• Updated information relating to all relevant projects in the Fourth Framework Programme will be available on the site from mid-February 1999 and a new issue of the Non-Food CD-ROM containing this data will be available by the end of February 1999.
• Four further newsletters will be issued in 1999 and will include items covering partners/materials requests.
• Password protection will be removed from the web site on 1 January 1999.
• Collaboration with Hungarian and Polish National Representatives will continue.
• All relevant FAIR participants will be added as postal or on-line registrants.
• Items containing details of partners and sources of material will be included in Newsletters in year 3.
• A separate commercial and info source section will be added to the NF-2000 database.
• A second questionnaire will be produced.
• Mechanisms for continuing this activity after the end of this FAIR project will be investigated.