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Standards help researchers and innovators bring their innovation closer to the market and spread technological advances by establishing uniform criteria and by developing methods, practices and procedures which are publicly available in a formal document. European and international standards provide access to large global and regional markets for innovative new products and services.

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Standards offer a basis for the integration of diverse technologies into complex, innovative systems and solutions, and enable interoperability between components, products and services thereby avoiding vendor lock-in and providing more choice for customers globally – a critical role in a world undergoing digital transformation across all industries and sectors.

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Standards enable the free movement of goods, services and data by removing technical barriers. They serve to set minimum safety requirements to the development, transport and use of these goods and services, to protect the public and workers. Standards directly address the UN Sustainable Development Goals and can help strengthen resilience of the economy of the Union. They play a key role in the Union’s ambitions towards a climate neutral, resilient and circular economy and in strengthening its open strategic autonomy. Having a strong global footprint in standardisation activities and leading the work in key international fora and institutions will be essential for the Union to remain a global standard-setter.

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Evidence across many different types of research and innovation (R&I) projects supports the role of standardisation in creating marketable products and solutions (1). Standards can codify requirements from users and other stakeholders to guide research and technology development. They allow technologies, products and services to be interoperable: since a standard provides details on the use and content of a technology or a product, it is much easier to know when and how it can be used in combination with other technologies or products.

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Awareness of the benefits of standardisation is an important prerequisite for the successful involvement of research actors in standardisation activities. It is important to plan standardisation activities upfront in the initial R&I project work plan and to identify the standardisation needs at the beginning of the project, before delivering exploitable results.

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Stable and recurring sets of elements of good practice of research projects dealing with standardisation exist (2). At the same time, there is a strong potential for raising researchers’ awareness of and know-how about standardisation processes, and for the development of recognised performance indicators to track the success of technology transfer and valorisation activities. Awareness and know-how could equally be raised regarding how standardisation processes are interrelated to and interacting with research processes and innovation processes. The successful integration of R&I and standardisation activities can give a significant impetus to the uptake of R&I activities.

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Technology readiness levels (TRLs) and the change therein during the project can be considered important indicators for assessing the relevance and performance of an R&I project in terms of the standardisation activities. Different TRLs may also imply different needs in terms of standards and standardisation: lower TRLs are typically associated more with work to be done, for example, on terminologies and concepts, metrology and testing, use cases and reference architectures; while later-stage TRLs are typically more concerned with issues such as interoperability and performance (for example, in terms of security, safety, environmental impact and functionality) of the technology/innovation – hence, standards across all TRLs are important for researchers and innovators across many technology and application domains.

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R&I actors can either lead, follow or adopt new standards in support of the development and international deployment of the latest technologies, innovations and trends. The earlier R&I actors engage in the standards development process, integrated within their overall R&I process, the sooner they can bring their standards-informed innovations to competitive global markets, resulting in greater value and rewards. Hence the leaders get ahead by leveraging their early and active involvement in setting new standards. During the standards development process, they also obtain valuable technical and market insights to inform their R&I strategy and roadmaps and gain a time-to-market advantage over their competitors due to their early engagement in developing the new standards. These leaders (including SMEs and start-ups) also gain the opportunity to position and add their own unique product or service innovations on top of the foundational standard that they helped set.

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There is a need to address the skills gap in training and lecturing (3). It is essential to build a fundamental understanding of the characteristics and relationships between research processes, innovation processes, and standardisation processes and how they can reinforce each other to boost knowledge valorisation (4).

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One of the major issues to be addressed in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) or research organisation policy regarding standards and standardisation for research valorisation is to incentivise the standardisation activities of its researchers and make these activities count towards career development.

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In the Union, Technology Transfer Offices have over the years established themselves in many Higher education institutions and research organisations as service stops not only for handling and filing IP, or supporting start-up creation, but also for providing general support when dealing with contract research and helping to administer collaborative research projects. Technology transfer organisations are hence another institutional anchor point indicated for supporting standardisation, and their involvement is a logical continuation of their knowledge/technology transfer role. In contrast to patents and scientific publications, it seems that the concept of authorship is not widely implemented, making it more difficult to track impact using citation measurement techniques.

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For many R&I projects, involvement in creating a new standard may not be the best or even a feasible option. At the same time there is great potential from researchers engaging in the early stages of standardisation activities within R&I programmes, where researchers gain important knowledge and networks, while also contributing to the development of key new or improved international and European standards in critical topic areas for industry and society.

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When a project recognises its limits in terms of scope, duration and resources, it may seek to consolidate its findings and inputs with other similar projects. Many thematic platforms and clusters already exist in different sectors and seek to improve the performance and maximise progress of their specific sectors.

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In line with the European Research Area (ERA) Policy Agenda (5) which includes an action to ‘Upgrade EU guidance for better knowledge valorisation’, the Commission proposes this Recommendation on a Code of Practice on standardisation in the European Research Area to implement the Council Recommendation (EU) 2022/2415 (6). The call for this Recommendation was identified in the Commission Communication on a new ERA for Research and Innovation (7) and in the Council Conclusions of 26 November 2021 on the governance of ERA and on the Pact for Research and Innovation in Europe (8). Furthermore, the EU Strategy on Standardisation (9) emphasises the importance of raising strategic awareness and engaging the R&I community early on in standardisation and states the need for this Recommendation.

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This Recommendation reflects the new directions introduced by the Recommendation (EU) 2022/2415 as it aims to raise strategic awareness among researchers and innovators of the very substantial benefits of integrating R&I and standardisation, and to provide best practice advice on how to do this integration successfully across their R&I activities for maximum value creation and impact.

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This Recommendation is formulated at the level of higher education institutions and private and public research and innovation organisations, at research and innovation project partners level and at policy and wider stakeholder level. This Recommendation should be applied in compliance with any relevant rule at national or regional level and at the level of the Union,

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intellectual property means the result of intellectual activities that is eligible for legal protection and includes inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs;

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standard means a technical specification, adopted by a recognised standardisation body on international, European or national level, for repeated or continuous application, with which compliance is not compulsory (10);

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Standard Development Organisation means a body that specialises in the development of standards through the process of consensus and facilitates experts to participate in the standardisation process;

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standardisation means a process aiming at the definition of voluntary technical or quality specifications with which current or future products, production processes or services may comply. Standardisation can cover various issues, such as standardisation of different grades or sizes of a particular product or technical specifications in product or services markets where compatibility and interoperability with other products or systems are essential (11);

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technical committee means a diverse stakeholder group of experts responsible for the development and drafting of standards which are then recognised by a standardisation body;

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technical specification means a document that sets out technical requirements to be fulfilled by a product, process, service or system and which lays down the characteristics required of a product or service such as quality and performance, the production methods and processes used and the methods and the criteria for assessing the performance of construction products (12).

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