Report from the training of EURAXESS national portals’ administrators, June 14-15th 2017, Belgrade

1. Celebrating national portals launch and
new commitments
Report from the training of EURAXESS national portals’ administrators, June 14-15th
2017, Belgrade
One and a half day training took place in Belgrade, Hotel Zira, on June 14-15, 2017. It was organized by
MEF. The concept of the training was built around three keywords: introspection, promotion and
innovation.
First, after successful launch of the national portals and use of mostly technical indicators which were
considered for the initial quality assessment, it was time to look more carefully at the content and think
about first revisions of its structure. Thus, the most of the training was oriented to information
architecture and quality assessment.
Second, it is often highlighted by the EC that the visibility of the portals should now become one of the
most important concerns, since the number of visits is obvious first choice when considering evidence
base for the usefulness of the portals. Given the fact that social media marketing is the most cost-
effective approach for the portals promotion, a part of the training was focused to developing skills for
Facebook advertising.
Third, the EURAXESS network is today being built beyond the researchers’ mobility pillar, reaching out to
the domains of career development, engagement with industry and others. Pioneering efforts in
developing the awareness, knowledge base and skills related to the above domains in the network are
being carried out (or were done) by the TOPIII project and associated Network Call, EURAXIND, PIPERS
and REFLEX projects. Each of those projects on their behalf has brought an innovation, highly important
for the portal. In order to highlight it, the members of the PA group were invited to present their
experiences, tools, approaches and frameworks they considered innovative and new.
All training material, including information architecture manual and slides is published on the Extranet,
on this page: https://www.euraxess.rs/extranet/library/field_extranet_lib_topics/euraxess-national-
portals-1627/field_extranet_lib_topics/trainings-1662?keywords=belgrade (you have to login before
accessing the page).
The training is filmed and produced material will be edited and published online.
Photos from the event are published here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm2Bx9Uu

2. Agenda of the training
Wed, June 14th
9:00 Registration
9:30 Welcome to Serbia, EURAXESS Miroslav Trajanović (Serbian
EURAXESS BHO)
Ljiljana Radović (MEF, Vice-dean)
Viktor Nedović (Assistant Minister,
Ministry of education, science and
technological development)
9:40 Introduction to the training. Summary of portals
transition, future priorities. Role of Intrasoft, technical
lessons learnt, new help system.
Milan Zdravković (MEF)
Kitty Fehringer (EC)
Dimitris Kokorogiannis (Intrasoft)
10:20 Content architecture. Which dataone information topic
needs to (must) have? How to highlight important
information? How to find the structure? “Other”
content? Exercise and discussion.
Milan Zdravković (MEF)
12:00 Coffee break
12:30 Advanced page layout. How to effectively use
components to implement the content architecture
design? How to make use of the wizard component?
Exercise and discussion.
Dimitris Kokorogiannis (Intrasoft)
13:30 Lunch
15:00 Digital marketing. Facebook advertising as a channel for
reaching researchers
Jelena Ožegović (RNIDS)
16:30 Coffee break
17:00 Sharing experiences and good practices
- Polish portal development testimonial
- Using portal to support employers
- Open science online tools
- RRI tools
- How to setup career development page on your
national EURAXESS portal
Monika Zaremba (PAS)
Hadewich Eggink (Nuffic)
Sandra Fernandes (FCT)
Katarina Anđelković (Center for
Science Promotion, Serbia)
Shaun Holmes (BC)
20:00 Dinner
Thu, June 15th
9:30 Portal quality workshop. National portals assessments
by peers. What are the good and not so good practices
on the national portals?
Anna Mossolova (ETAG)
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 Summary and take home messages. Follow ups and
commitments. Discussion on how to use and reuse
existing content, tools and experience?
Milan Zdravković (MEF)
13:00 Lunch

3. Participants
Training involved 53 participants including external trainers and guests. 47 EURAXESS national portals
administrators from 33 countries participated in the training. Some countries did not participate in the
training: Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Faroe Islands and France.
Final list of participants is shown below.
Name Organization Country
Achilleas Tsiligeridis Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) GR
Agnes Kamaras Bay Zoltan HU
Ahmet Furkan Ciftci TUBITAK TR
Anna Comini AREA Science Park IT
Anna Mossolova Estonian Research Council EE
Arnis Kokorevics EURAXESS Latvia LV
Bernard Delhausse BELSPO BE
Birgitta Karlén University of Gothenburg SE
Borislav Štulić University of Banja Luka Republic of Srpska BA
Catherine Vésy Swissuniversities CH
Dana Pleskotova EURAXESS Luxembourg LU
Daniel Velicu UEFISCDI RO
Denise Bartolo The Malta Council for Science and Technology MT
Dimitros Sanopoulos CERTH GR
Dimitris Kokorogiannis Intrasoft, trainer IN
Els Haesaert EURAXESS Belgium BE
Hadewich Eggink Nuffic, contributor NL
Hanna Raig Estonian Research Council EE
Ion Marin Center of International Projects MD
Jean-Francois Chevalier FNRS BE
Jelena Ozegovic RNIDS, trainer RS
Jennifer Cleary Irish Universities Association IE
John Baarli Research Council of Norway NO
Katalin Kalai Bay Zoltan HU
Katarina Anđelković Centre for science promotion, trainer RS
Katrin Schaarschmidt DLR DE

4. Kitty Fehringer European Commission, contributor EC
Kornelija Janavičiūtė Research Council of Lithuania LT
Lidija Milosavljevic University of Montenegro ME
Liliane Järmann Swissuniversities CH
Ljilja Radovic University of Niš RS
Maria Sasova SAIA SK
Maria Unger
Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education
and Research (OeAD-GmbH)
AT
Marin Barzakov University of Sofia BG
Marius Dorian Nicolaescu UEFISCDI RO
Mariya Dikova Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" BG
Milan Zdravkovic University of Niš, trainer, organizer RS
Miroslav Malinović University of Banja Luka Republic of Srpska BA
Miroslav Trajanovic University of Niš, organizer RS
Monika Zaremba IPPT PAN, contributor PL
Nikola Korunovic University of Niš, organizer RS
Robert Marinšek CMEPIUS SI
Sandra Fernandes FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia PT
Shaun Holmes British Council, contributor UK
Stamenko Mijatovic University of Banja Luka Republic of Srpska BA
Stanimira Yordanova University of Sofia BG
Tamara Dimitrova Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts MK
Tanja Malo University of Helsinki FI
Viktor Nedovic
Ministry of education, science and technological
development
RS
Vitaliy Bondarenko DLR DE
Xavier Eekhout Fundacion Espanola para la Ciencia y la Tecnologia ES
Yair Rudick IP&D IL
Zuzana Ledesmova Academy of sciences CZ

5. Key points and notes
First part of the training was related to information architecture of the portal. It highlighted 270 content
blocks – pieces of information that can be and are classified in one of the 19 topics of the Information &
Assistance sections of the national portals. In the interactive part of the training, portal admins worked
on relevance assessment, prioritizing of the content blocks for the individual topics and selection of the
way in which the content is implemented by using them.
The next day, participants discussed about some of the issues raised and things that can be done to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the content management, related to information
architecture. Some of the key points made were:
- It is not so easy to establish common repository of the content that can be used in the
components/national portals, because of the permissions for use, which were already previously
granted and restricted sometimes to national portals only. Some examples for that are
testimonials and graphical content (although, still in the content management platform, it is
possible to view and use the images uploaded by all PAs – this is not good practice, because of
the restricted permissions of use). However, having a common graphics repository with clearly
defined licensing rights would be useful for many participants.
- It is found that classification of content in the national portals to some of the 19 topics is not
unified and common. Some change proposals were established, but the strong comment was
made that they should be tested first. Some of the proposed changes included merging medical
care and health insurance topics and establishing Daily life, customs and lifestyle topic.
- A better approach for presenting links to national landing pages from Search information page
on the EU portal is needed. Currently, the titles are misleading and country to which the content
is related is not clearly highlighted.
Intrasoft presented improvements of the portal platform, implemented during and after the process of
national portals development. Those improvements included new help system and wizard component.
In addition, the event management platform was presented and explained in detail.
Common technical problems and mistakes in implementing national portals were highlighted, including
the measures to fix them. Those included:
- Improper use of links (links with absolute path - most common mistake, links with wrong node
id, external links.)
- Improper use of images, due to incorrect selection of the image type when inserting
- No back button in sub-pages, resulting with difficulties in user navigation, and
- Non-standard HTML code, resulting from improper pasting from the rich text editors, such as
Microsoft Word
Event management platform presentation was followed by the active discussion among participants. It
appears that, as it is now, the process of creating event content may be ineffective due to the
bottleneck produced at the position of national portal administrators (currently, they are the only role
who can create the relevant content and manage registration process). Two solutions were proposed:

6. - Keeping the event content creation at the role of national portal administrators and
externalizing (to EURAXESS Service centers staff) management of the registrations, including
sending invitations, reminders, etc.
- Externalizing the complete process to the EURAXESS Service centers staff, while introducing
simple workflow with approve/reject functionality at the role of EURAXESS portal
administrators.
The second part of the training presented two main topics related to Facebook advertising. First, it is
explained how the users can be targeted on Facebook, namely which demographics, interests and
behaviors factors can be used to identify the right target group for the message which needs to be
transmitted on Facebook. Second, complete process of publishing Facebook ads, by using Ads Manager
is explained. Both topics will be covered by the handbook, which will be prepared and shared by the
presented, with the training participants, by mid-September.
In the last session of the training, portal administrators presented different contributions, produced in
the past, mostly in course of one of the projects’ implementations. Their contributions were discussed
next day. The key points made were:
- The national portals participants are very interested to implement their own section with
information exclusively targeting employers. This would mean that the employers would
become more interested and involved, which is certainly a good thing. Still, the portal is mainly
for researchers, so this set of pages should be optional and it is not the first priority. Having
common information architecture for the section would be helpful and it needs to be based on
the discussion with employers.
- The list of useful open science tools with associated report will be produced. This list and report
will be “webified” – transformed into the web content which will be published on the EU portal
pages and can be reused then by the national portals.
- The schema of the information architecture of the future career development section of the EU
portal will be developed soon and shared with the participants. It will be also presented in the
next training of BHO, which will take place in February, in Poland.
Portal quality workshop
The main objective of the portal quality workshop was to collaboratively develop and validate list of
indicators that could be used in the quality assessment of the national portals. Following indicators were
proposed by the participants:
- Easy navigation - using back-buttons on
subpages
- Clearly distinguishable components of
the page – avoiding long content
sections
- Size of the page, could affect the
download time
- Meaningful use of components –
correct choice of the component for the
presented content

7. - Up-to-date data / time stamps on the
page – to be requested to be displayed
- Existence of broken links (to be checked
by using online broken links checkers)
- Respecting accessibility standards and
guidelines
- Relevance of the content
- Appropriate use of original graphics and
illustrations
- Use of responsive images
- Accuracy of information
- Disclaimer for Information & Assistance
section content
- Content completeness
- Use of appropriate volume of
information on one page – avoid
information overload
- Use of pages on social media - number
of exit pages to Facebook (to be
checked by using Google Analytics)
- Credibility and relevance of the external
sources
- Number of returning users (to be
checked with Google Analytics)
- Clarity of the info presented
- Highlighted links and explanations
what’s behind the link
- Cookie disclaimer with confirmation
- Number of clicks to get to the
information / actual data (practical
information) is not hidden behind too
many clicks
- Use of news and events tool /
frequency of update
- Compliance to the common structure
- Duration of stay (to be checked with
Google Analytics)
- Clear, informative and teasing titles
After the validation (peer-to-peer evaluation of national portals, additional comments were made by the
participants, as it follows:
- The list of indicators should be shorter and priorities should be defined, including minimum
standards.
- The indicators should be grouped.
- Some indicators are related to the actions which can only be done by Intrasoft. These indicators
should be removed from the list.
- Pictures should be relevant to the country of the national portal using them. Right now, they are
often very generic. Copyright issue should be handled with care.
- Back buttons are helpful and they should be a part of the minimum standards.
- Complex structures with too many pages should be avoided.
See you in Tallinn
During the training, many interesting and relevant opportunities for joint work in the next PA training as
well as the needs of the participants were discussed. In fact, due to the short period between two
trainings, the Tallinn training is perceived as the continuation of this one. Therefore, it is strongly
recommended to have the same participants for the Tallinn training.

8. An effort should be made to reduce the risk of having portal inaccessible due to many concurrent
accesses (from single public IP address) from the laptops and phones connected to venue wi-fi
infrastructure.
Some of the possible topics for the training include but are not restricted to:
- Working together on the common information architecture for the Information for employers
section
- Extension of Social media training, for example, how we can use social media in line with other
promotional activities – as part of the broader promotional strategy – how does that work with
Promotional Action Plan, developed in TOPII?
- Finding and presenting relevant actual data online, which can be used to design and share
attractive media content, for example infographics
- Advanced use of Google Analytics, beyond most often used indicators
In addition, participants were also invited to put their comments related to content and organization of
the training in the training assessment forms. Comments received were:
- Extend the duration to another day to avoid rushing through the schedule
- More digital marketing oriented content
- More work should be done on the common structures
- Peer-to-peer review is very useful, it should be repeated – Quality workshop should become the
universal session in all PA trainings/even meetings
- Presentation slides should be sent before the training to the participants
- Copyrights for images should be explained
- Content writing (writing for web)
- Allocate time for one-on-one meetings with technical and content managers of the portal
- More hands-on work directly on the portals – the practical workshop should be organized after
the training so participants can directly implement on their portals what they have learnt
- Create a WG of 3-4 PAs that are also developers to liaise in communication between all national
portal administrators on one side and Intrasoft and European Commission on another, for the
purpose of more efficient communication.
- The PA meeting should be organized in a big room with classroom style sitting.
- Participants need to have name tags
- Quality workshop should be organized in two parts – brain storming on first day, the rest on
second one. This would have allowed participants to go more deeply in the assessment of the
quality of the website.
Finally, the trainer who implemented the Facebook advertising part was asked to list the topics which
could be useful to consider as continuation of skills development in the field of digital promotion. The
following topics were proposed:
- Recap of the June training: where you are with FB ads, examples of portals which have used it,
their experiences and issues (short talk and discussion) as an intro before the lecture.

9. - Content strategy for EURAXESS portals - how to plan and implement strategies across EURAXESS
communication channels
- Using Facebook Pixel to Measure, Optimize, and Build Audiences for Campaigns
- Carousel format of website clicks FB ad - a chance for great storytelling
- Measuring and reporting - how to track the results in FB Ad Manager and Google Analytics. The
importance of Google Analytics events and opportunities for measuring