We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.
Welcome to the Knowledge4Policy Guidance area.
Here you’ll find practical advice for creating clear, accessible and policy-relevant content on Knowledge4Policy. Whether you’re experienced in creating content for K4P or are contributing to the platform for the first time, this guidance walks you through the essentials: how to write about your research engagingly and accessibly, for policymakers and other non-specialist audiences as well as for your fellow researchers.
We’ve organised the material into a number of learning paths that you can follow step-by-step. Each learning unit focuses on specific skills and practices that can help you write effective content for K4P, making your research understandable and useful beyond the research community.
This guidance was originally developed for European Commission scientists at the Joint Research Centre who publish on K4P, gathering scientific knowledge from different sources and producing syntheses written specifically for policymakers.
As well as K4P Editors and Contributors, K4P Members can also contribute scientific knowledge and collaborate with JRC scientists on policy syntheses, so we have made most of this guidance available to everyone. Like the K4P User Manual with which it shares the K4P Learning Centre, only some guidance is restricted to K4P Editors and Contributors, or to Editors, Contributors and Members.
The Guidance has three main pillars (some content is still under development):
This user manual contains content for three different audiences.
What you can see depends on who you are:
The user manual page you are reading now is the only user manual page present in all three.
Moreover, help content also appears where it is most useful - in each content creation form, Members, Editors and Contributors will find a "Help" tab containing links to relevant user manual pages:
Please see the About Knowledge4Policy page.
Knowledge4Policy combines a powerful search engine with a sophisticated taxonomy. But it's still easy to use.
To search the entire Knowledge4Policy database, simply go to the Home Page and enter your search term(s) into the "Search the entire KnowledgeBase" form. Please note:
Clicking Search takes you to the search results, which you can then refine using the filters on the left:
Finally, some knowledge types come with additional filters: if you preselected "Events" on the Home Page before hitting Search, for example, you will see a date filter ("Timing"), while those searching for "Publications" will see a "Publication type" filter.
You can also search from a Knowledge Service's landing page (see Knowledge Service A-Z), in which case you are searching less knowledge with greater granularity as you:
There are two types of filter specific to a Knowledge Service:
Right: when searching the Migration and Demograpohy Knowledge Service, users can filter by both Topics and two local taxonomies.
At the bottom of every page in K4P you’ll find a simple Yes/No question: “Was this page useful?”, while each page’s footer features a “Give us feedback” link.
Feedback concerning a specific page.
Feedback or question concerning Knowledge4Policy as a whole.
In all cases:
K4P hosts many enewsletters, each managed by a different knowledge service.
Currently, you can subscribe to them by:
You will be able to (un)subscribe from any enewsletter from any edition.
(*) Note: In the future, you’ll also be able to manage all your subscriptions via a one stop shop inside your user menu, as long as you use the same email address for your newsletters as your K4P account. See FAQ: What is a K4P account, how do I create one and how do I use it?
Please see our privacy policy.
Please see our accessibility statement.
Knowledge4Policy is built using the Drupal content management system, specifically a Drupal platform known as "Open EUROPA", coupled to the "Europa Component Library" design language.
Both are maintained by the EU Commission's IT department (DIGIT), and are open source, as is the K4P-specific code. It is therefore theoretically possible to set up your own website, although both DIGIT's and K4P's code and design will require substantial adaptation.
Before deciding whether that is worth the effort, you might want to better understand the theory underpinning the website's architecture. Some good places to start can be found in Building knowledge for policy.
The K4P team is interested in exchanging audience research, ideas and insights on how best to design science4policy websites, so if you would like to join the conversation please take this short survey.
To learn more, please join the Evidence-informed policymaking knowledge service, and contact Mathew Lowry using K4P's Contact Me feature.
It is not possible for any one team to organise the world’s scientific knowledge in a domain and synthesise it for policymakers.
In 2021 we therefore began working on the first of a series of community features to allow users to:
The following features are currently available:
More details on the above features are provided via the Members' user manual.
Future developments will include:
There is one K4P community: each member of Knowledge4Policy has one K4P account and one K4P personal profile (see FAQ: What is my personal profile and how do I create and manage mine?). All personal profiles appear in the All members gallery in the top K4P menu.
On the other hand, we often refer to knowledge service communities. Each of them:
As a K4P member you can apply to join one, several or all knowledge service communities. When your application is approved by the knowledge service you:
Each Knowledge Service on K4P with a knowledge community has one or more community managers.
They are scientists, working in multidisciplinary teams within the EU Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
In addition to their scientific work, they are responsible for managing their knowledge service’s presence on K4P.
What is it? A K4P account allows you to login to K4P to access its interactive features, ranging from ‘Ask a scientist’ through to joining Working Groups (see FAQ: What is the K4P Community).
How do I create my K4P account? Like all accounts on the European Commission’s websites, K4P accounts use the EU Login authentication system. To create a K4P account is simple.
Now that I have an account, how do I log in?
Your user menu is where you manage your profile, knowledge and interactions on Knowledge4Policy.
To access your user menu, login (see FAQ: What is a K4P account and how do I create one?). The Login link now gives you a dropdown, pointing to several key pages in your user menu, which currently contains:
More community features are under development, so the above pages will evolve as new features arrive.
In the interests of transparency, a public personal profile is required before you can contribute to Knowledge4Policy, so all K4P users know who is contributing each piece of knowledge. The more detail you provide about yourself, the more credible your contributions.
Login, navigate to your user menu (see FAQ: What is my user menu?) and click “My profile”.
Fill in the form. Note that:
Once you have submitted your personal profile, the community manager(s) of the knowledge service(s) you included will check your profile.
You can submit your profile to multiple knowledge services at once. Alternatively, you can apply to one and then apply to other knowledge services later by adding them to your profile.
The first time any knowledge service community manager approves your profile, your personal profile’s status becomes ‘public’. It is published and now appears in the global K4P members gallery.
You can use ‘Ask a scientist’ and ‘Contact me’, and as you are now a member of that knowledge service:
The second and subsequent times a different knowledge service’s community manager approves your public profile, you join that knowledge service as well. If a knowledge service’s manager does not approve your (already public) profile, your profile remains public, but you simply do not join that knowledge service.
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