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Hello Nigel and Shane At Sciencewise we require the independent evaluation of all the public dialogue projects (on policy involving science and technology) that we co-fund, and publish all the evaluation reports. As you are both suggesting, those reports are often very long - I am personally guilty of writing pretty lengthy evaluation reports. But to cover all the issues that matter in these projects does sometimes require quite a long report. We do always require Executive Summaries too, and those are often useful. Sometimes the Executive Summaries (usually 4 pages maximum) are published separately - one I did myself on the Drugsfutures project is available on the project page on the Sciencewise website at http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/drugsfutures-2/. All the project evaluations are available within each project page on the Sciencewise website at http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/sciencewise-dialogue-projects/. Maybe more relevant here are the case studies, again done for every project Sciencewise co-funds. Those are 4 pages only and do aim to cover the key lessons identified from the evaluation as well as other material from other project reports. As one of the authors of these studies, I will leave it to others to judge how well written they are. You can see all the available case studies on the Sciencewise web site at http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/dialogue-project-case-studies/ The publication of evaluations of projects while in progress is always difficult. I don't think it is as much fear of learnings being dissected in public as needing to see how the whole project plays out before conclusions on what really worked well or less well can be reached. At Sciencewise we have been increasingly encouraging formative evaluation within projects, so evaluation evidence is used to help the project develop. We are also starting to publish interim evaluation reports, following the public dialogue events but before the whole project is completed, so that the findings on that part of the process - and emerging learning - can be available sooner. We did that with the synthetic biology project (see http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/synthetic-biology/). Another interim evaluation report is planned to be published on the dialogue on openness in animal research in the next month or so (see that project page at http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/openness-on-animal-research-dialogue/). Of course, the accessibility of the language of evaluation reports is another thing all together, and one which continues to challenge all of us, including those of us who try really hard to do it ourselves. Diane Diane Warburton Sciencewise Evaluation Manager Tel: 01273 774557 | Email: [log in to unmask] | Web: www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk Diane Warburton is also Senior Partner at Shared Practice | Email: [log in to unmask] | Web: www.sharedpractice.org.uk Follow us on Twitter Sciencewise Facebook Page ********************************************************************** Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets) • set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday) • set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages) • signoff psci-com (to leave the list) • Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com Contact list owner at [log in to unmask] Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print **********************************************************************