Voluntary, documentary standards play a critical, but frequently overlooked role in facilitating and regulating industry and commerce. The importance of standards to established markets for products and services and to product and market development cannot be overstated. Without standards our technologically advanced societies could not have developed. Despite providing a basis for all industrial and commercial activity, standards do not dictate how products are designed and manufactured, though they might dictate product safety requirements through their incorporation into regulation. Standards derive their legitimacy from the voluntary and consensual nature of their development process. Most of all, standards provide utility – if someone uses a standard it is because it provides a reliable, though not necessarily the only or best, solution to a problem.

From the point of view of research and development, standards are one of the most important tools used to take new technologies to the market place. By transferring research findings into guidance documents, standards provide a bridge connecting research to industry. This connectivity is critical to successful commercialisation.

This handbook has been produced to provide members of the research and development community, and particularly those engaged in collaborative projects supported by the European Commission Framework Programmes, with a basic understanding of standards and the standardization process and of how standards can contribute to the dissemination and implementation of project outputs for the wider benefit of industry, commerce and consumers. Whilst standards can play an important role in the dissemination of project results, they are often overlooked in favour of other mechanisms, such as scientific publications, conference presentations and patents. The purpose of this handbook is therefore to highlight the complementary role that standards can play in making the results of research accessible to potential users, and to help guide researchers through, what is frequently, the unfamiliar territory of standards making.