Publicity for a cancer research project. How much does it cost?

Abstract This paper presents an applied case of publicity to demonstrate how a university cancer research group (a biomedical engineering team, Targetslab-GREP) without communication skills can achieve visibility. The article describes how to proceed to create an effective public relations strategy and publicize the research achievements, starting from the publication of their ONCOen3D project. It also explains how the return of the implemented communication actions has been calculated thanks to use a tool created on purpose (Effective Cost Return, ECR). It works by adding the ROI of tangible and intangible actions in accordance with the theoretical framework consulted. The most notable result obtained was the visibility and reputation of the previously unknown research group, with a media impact of 73 news items (leading to a saving of over €42,000—tangible element). It also made ONCOen3D known in other countries, such as Germany or Italy (visibility—intangible element). In addition, it won the first prize in an international competition (visibility and reputation—intangible elements). This article can be a valid and practical model to increase the visibility of scientific results and shows the value of multidisciplinary teams.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Sílvia Espinosa Mirabet holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising from the University Autonomous of Barcelona (UAB) and is currently Vice Dean of the Faculty of Tourism&Communication at the University of Girona (UdG). Her long academic and professional career related to the world of radio, has not prevented her work from moving between communication, health or tourism, presenting a marked interdisciplinary character. Her extensive experience in the media has allowed her to direct and produce research related to the history of women in radio. Member of the research team Targetslab-GREP(UdG), her research is reflected in several International conferences, International research stays, more than 25 scientific articles in indexed journals, and 25 books and book chapters . PhD Espinosa-Mirabet conceived the idea of that article to explain her job in her scientific research group. She collected the data and wrote the manuscript with the support of PhD Mònica Puntí-Brun. PhD Puntí-Brun compiled part of the bibliographic sources for the theoretical framework and wrote the article together with PhD Espinosa Mirabet. Mònica Puntí Brun, holds a PhD in Human Sciences and Culture from the University of Girona (UdG) about journalism and proximity digital media. Professor of UdG and Universitat Oberta de Ccatalunya (UOC), her main lines of research are scientific and health communication, corporate communication, digital communication, digital or cyber media and proximity media. These are the topics of her academic publications and with which she participates in international conferences.

Introduction
In the 21st century, the experimental sciences have three different categories of stakeholders for the dissemination of their most important discoveries to society: scientists, patients and citizens in general (Weberling, 2011). Scientific communication still generally takes place in three contexts. It is published in international indexed journals, findings are shared at international conferences, and/or through the media. Publicly funded research has a duty to inform society in general of knowledge and advances made; those international institutions that fund research also require this. Making research "more approachable and understandable" can help public audiences understand it better and become engaged and motivated to keep learning or act (Meyer et al., 2022).
However, this is not always simple or effective. Scientists in Spain face numerous problems in explaining their work to media; their work receives little or no attention from the media unless the discovery is very important. This can clearly be seen during COVID-19 pandemic, when mass media and its audiences 1 showed great interest in information about the disease, vaccines, and other aspects (Della Giusta et al., 2021). Cancer-related subjects are the second most common media content, following COVID-19 (Anderson et al., 2020).
According to data of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, science generally only uses advertising when the message is institutional, preventive, or obligatory. The above-mentioned Ministry placed only three advertising campaigns in 2019 (before COVID-19), 2 the less Spanish ministries investment in advertising (La Moncloa, 2019). If scientific achievements fail to make news, researchers fail to obtain wide-scale social recognition, reputation (Coccia & Benati, 2018) and visibility, thus making finding sponsors or patrons even more complicated. This paper describes a professional case applied successfully at University of Girona (Spain). It demonstrates how a simple public relations act (a media conference) increased visibility and reputation of the ONCOen3D scientific project, 3 and, had the project used advertising to make itself known, what the cost would have been. To this end, the project integrated media specialists into a biomedical engineering research team. Some studies (Mackert et al., 2020;Meyer et al., 2022) demonstrate the importance of collaboration between health researchers and professional communicators because it is a way to improve the engagement with public audiences, creating a consistent message. Therefore, the main aim is showing how to construct an effective publicity strategy that increases the visibility of a scientific research team. Furthermore, this paper explains how to measure the return on that publicity through an ad hoc application of an Effective Cost Return.
The aim led to the following research questions: Q1: How can non-media specialist scientific teams use public relations tools to disseminate their research most effectively?
Q2: How much would the generated publicity cost if it had to be paid for?
Q3: What are the current trends in measuring the return on investment in public relations actions according to the theoretical framework?

Theoretical framework
As some research explains (Koso, 2021), the media now pays more attention to scientific issues and science is adopting the requirements, formats, and practices of the media, in how it communicates with society. Publicity is "the information that a medium disseminates about activities, acts and events by means of news that is not endorsed by the organization, but rather it is the media that controls the message, and it is usually the informative result of a PR action by the organization" (Xifra, 2007, p. 43). This leads us to ask how a PR campaign and its ensuing publicity can be measured.
The bibliography consulted shows no single consensus. There are a number of metrics and proposals, each with its pros and cons, this makes calculating the cost of a PR campaign complex. The literature review provides examples of theoretical studies that focus on the metrics used, and empirical studies, in which professionals were asked about the metrics they commonly used. However, no studies have been found that apply metrics to a specific professional case, as we do in this article. Different studies have measured the value of establishing relationships with the public (Kim & Sung, 2016), or the engagement achieved in actions that take place on social media (Hopp & Gallicano, 2016;Vraga, et al., 2020). In a bibliographic review, López del Castillo-Wilderbeek (2020) advocate moving the economic concept of Opportunity Cost to the field of PR.
New technologies (Wirtz & Zimbres, 2018) have led to an increasing importance in public relations of dialogic theory, "a relation orientation that values sharing and mutual understanding" (Uysal, 2018, p. 101). The review also shows various tools used to measure and evaluate PR actions: Return On Investment (ROI); Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE); analytical tools (such as Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights, among others); polls and surveys; discussions with stakeholders; and press clippings (Magoutas et al., 2019). Assessing the use of public relations is clearly highly important in communication strategy and campaigns (Nikolic et al., 2020, p. 79). As mentioned above, a number of methods and tools exist that measure PR actions; for example, Nikolic et al. (2020) developed a questionnaire that measured the quality of the work of the PR department in organizations.
In this article, as we sought to discover the renown and reputation achieved and the financial savings made in relation to an advertising campaign, we constructed our own model: it uses AVE for calculations related to clippings, and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) as it concerns the effectiveness of actions. Table 1 shows the comparison of the various metrics that have been reviewed in the existing literature. (Goodwin, 2017;Macnamara, 2015), i.e. non-economic variables. In a study on the calculation of ROI in internal communication programs, Meng and Berger (2012, p. 350) conclude: "an accurate calculation of ROI needs to include an estimation of both the financial and non-financial costs and benefits of a specific communication program". Furthermore, they add that assessment must be long-term, as costs and benefits are often non-financial and appear only at the end of the communication and public relations program; this approach would be more appropriate than a single formula (Meng & Berger, 2012). To avoid this dichotomy of financial and non-financial measures, some authors propose other expressions, such as "total value", Marklein and Paine (2012), or "outflow" Watson & Zerfass, 2011;as cited in López del Castillo-Wilderbeek, 2020). For the calculation of the return on publicity, Likely et al. (2006) have determined four models of ROI: return on impressions; return on media impact; return on target influence; and return on earned media (the latter would be similar to the calculation of the AVE).
Although some authors consider that AVE does not demonstrate the value of PR work (AMEC (International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication; July, 2020a), it is an equivalence model. There is a consensus that it can serve "for the comparison of the alternatives that have been discarded with respect to those communication actions that have been materialized" (López del Castillo-Wilderbeek, 2020, p. 82). In this sense, AVE is useful in identifying and understanding how much the space occupied by news would cost if it were advertising. Therefore, we could say that AVE is a measure of what in economics is termed opportunity cost, matching what Likely (2012) calls cost-benefit analysis.
According to Jim Macnamara (2006), "AVE are calculated by multiplying column centimetres [sic] of editorial print media coverage, and seconds of broadcast publicity by the respective media advertising rates. In most applications, the total amount of editorial coverage is 'valued' as if it was advertising, irrespective of its content and tone" (p. 1). He adds that in some cases, users of this method apply "multipliers" to advertising rates, as PR is more credible than advertising; this is referred to as "PR Value" (Macnamara, 2006). He lists other indicators that should be considered when assessing publicity, such as media importance including audience reach; placement (e.g., front page/cover, prominent page or at the back); article or report size; and illustrations, such as photos.
As mentioned above, Table 1 summarises the main theories on the calculation of the return on Public Relations. It also shows the diversity of proposals and perspectives that currently exist on the subject, which hinder finding a consensus on methodology. This is why we decided to create our own measurement method, (Effective Cost Return, ECR) which uses the main theories studied, and it is adapted to our research interest.
For ECR, we use CEA (Likely, 2012), since it permits the calculation of the AVE of the publicity with respect to advertising and other non-financial variables, such as visibility and reputation. Visibility is conceived as the amount of media coverage gained (Capriotti, n.d.;Theaker, 2004), while reputation is the culture and values of a brand and how these are explained (Capriotti, 2012;Pursals, 2014), in other words, the effectiveness. Media visibility is, according to Capriotti (n.d.,p. 6), "the amount of information that appears in the media about a subject". Media attributes are the link made in the media with a subject, and media favourability is the level of assessment of the subject in the media, that is, the positive or negative evaluation (Capriotti, n.d.). Organizational reputation is a multidimensional term that can be conceptualized in three different ways (Lange et al., 2011): being known (the visibility or prominence of the firm); being known for something (perceived predictability of firm outcomes and behaviour); and generalized favourability (general perceptions or judgments of the firm). Despite its controversy as the only tool to calculate the return and/or cost of a PR campaign, AVE is still considered optimal:

CEA Definition
A metric that "compares the total expected costs of each option against the total expected benefits, to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and then by how much" (Likely, 2012).
A metric that "compares the relative costs and the outcomes (effects) of two or more courses of action or activities. It does not assign a monetary value (financial return) to measure of effect" (Likely, 2012).
Formula BCR = Benefits (or financial return) ÷ costs (Likely, 2012, p. 341, citing Mishan andQuah, 2007)  After a thorough study of the methods described above, it can be concluded that there is no single reliable and simple unit method capable of estimating the return on investment in communication.
Furthermore, the theoretical framework shows us that it is practically impossible to find papers describing an applied experience, which we intend to do in these pages.

Materials and methods
From the theoretical framework adopted in this article and considering the reasons stated above, it was decided to create an own tool, called Effective Cost Return, ECR (see Step 4, Figure 1), to calculate the return of the publicity achieved with the ONCOen3D Project. To do this, we relied on the methodology used in the strategic planning of public relations. It is a professional method, RACE (Research, Action, Communication and Evaluation), which serves to guide, create and tactically evaluate a public relations action (Matilla, 2018). In the case we are dealing with, the RACE has been applied and adapted, following the scheme in Figure 1.
The ONCOen3D presentation was designed with the following four chronological dimensions: • 3.1. Research: collecting information (Step 1, Figure 1).

Research: collecting information
Research serves to start any communication campaign. According to Matilla (2018), research ensures, among other reasons, the effectiveness of communication and provides objective information for the preparation of campaigns. In our case, the previous research carried out to create the publicity campaign focused on getting information from the three interviews held with the two Principal Investigators (PI) of ONCOen3D project. As a result of the research carried out, we obtained the following results: • Storytelling elements. In a first meeting, the key elements to build the storytelling based on scientific inputs were obtained. It was about turning a scientific achievement into something communicable to a non-scientific audience.
• Graphic identity. In a second meeting, the graphic identity of the project was worked on.
• Media release. In the third meeting, the scientific validation of the media release that included the storytelling was sought, which was subsequently sent to the media.

Storytelling: creating an informative story
The main aim of the storytelling was to obtain visibility (publicity) for an unknown biomedical cancer research project, and the instrument used was a media conference. This is the reason why, the stakeholders were current citizens impacted by journalists' job (news created). A very informative storytelling was built, copying the journalistic writings, to impress the greatest number of media. The media release announcement was titled "A research team of the UdG uses 3D printing to isolate breast cancer stem cells". The lead read, "Based on a biomedical engineering project, a pioneer system was developed, which allows experimentation costs to be reduced, thus increasing oncological research". The body of the information was written as a scientific news item; an informative story with an interesting approach to arouse media interest in ONCOen3D. Some studies have shown (Noar & Austin, 2020) that effective health communication requires clear and comprehensible messages. To verify the feasibility of the storytelling, the information was tested with two journalists and discussed with the Communication Department of the University, only then was it distributed to the media.

Dissemination: spreading the story to the media
A media kit (including a media release with additional information and images on the project) was created to invite media to the media conference. The media release highlighted the most significant achievement of the ONCOen3D project and its international position. This project is based on isolating triple-negative breast cancer tumour stem cells, by filaments called scaffolds, printed with 3D technology. Due to the importance of the topic, it was considered appropriate to convene both the local and international media (correspondents). The media were invited through the University's Communication Service regardless of their nature (radio, television, press and online). Some studies (Costa Sánchez, 2008;Guzmán Do Nascimento & Rodríguez Díaz, 2016) show that health-related topics that receive most media coverage are those that come from institutional sources or public figures, and those that correspond to congresses, conferences or events.
To make ONCOen3D known, we chose to make the media conference coincide with Cancer Week promoted by the Marató de TV3 Foundation (TV3 Telethon Foundation). 4 Moreover, health promotion initiatives have to compete for the public's attention with other issues, for this reason, it is very important to monitor them and adjust the timing and the communication strategy (Vraga et al., 2017).

Evaluation: assessing the impact of the media mentions and their tone
The evaluation was a very important part in our work. The objective of the tool created, Effective Cost Return (see , Table 2), was assessing the impact of the publicity campaign. It brought together formulas from different sources and was used to complete the three dimensions of our publicity return: • Money saved by disseminating the content (tangible). Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) was useful here.
• Impact of visibility achieved (tangible). Number of news items.
• Tone of this information (intangible). We noted the tone (favourable or not) of published messages.
• Degree of similarity between the media headlines and the information in our media kit (intangible).
Following the AVE strategy means looking only at the cost of publications as if they were advertisements. To do so, we researched the advertising rates of each Spanish media and compared them against the information collected.
The estimation does not take into account time spent by researchers in constructing or disseminating the story. The example of this paper is developed in the context of a public university and investigation is a part of researchers' salary. In other contexts, it will be necessary to monetize the time of the actions carried out to research, plan and develop the communication campaigns such as interviews, meetings or brainstorming sessions.
Continuing on the application of our methodological model, we focused on the headlines and the formats, space and time occupied by the information published in the media. In this case, and on the basis that "Undoubtedly, one of the main duties of PR is to write good press releases" (Kee & Hassan, 2006), we note the degree of similarity and tone between the published headlines in the media and the originals produced by us. We wanted to know if the tone was positive, negative or neutral, according to Turney (2002).
Firstly, to apply our ECR, we had to make a clipping. Media clippings are indispensable. This allowed us to know exactly the media impact and analysed it to calculate the return on our action, keeping in mind that "the advertising rate is highly flexible and the credibility of journalistic articles is normally higher than advertisements. Even if critics refuse to endorse AVE as a measurement tool, they cannot deny that there are situations and methodologies in which advertising rates obtained from the rate card can be useful" (Kee & Hassan (2006), p. 50). Clippings were compiled using two sources. The first, and official one, was through the Acceso company, hired by the UdG Communication Service. It comprehended media audited by the Oficina de la Justificación de la Difusión (Circulation Audit Office). 5 We carried out the second clipping, in order to quantify the impacts in specialized, non-mass-media, and non-audited media, including websites. All news formats that appeared in the media were contemplated, whatever their tone.
Once we had the impacts published in the media, we were able to analyse the degree of similarity between the news items and the storytelling of the media release (Busto Salinas, 2012). To do this, we had to use the technique of content analysis, following Bardin (2002). Two researchers coded the news items with a difference of four months, following a codebook (See Appendix A) made by purpose, to identify the degree of similarity between media headlines and the information in our  media kit. Before, to test the reliability of the coding development, 14 items (20% of the total) were randomly selected and encrypted, obtaining a confidence index in the final results of 95%. Finally, we coded 73 news items, the majority between December 12 th and 21 st 2018.
The criteria followed to define a positive, negative or neutral message also include the statements that Sobrino López (2008) made in the healthcare area. For this author, bad news refers to information that negatively changes the perspective of the patient about his or her future. In line with Solans-Domènech et al. (2019), we take into account news that is optimistic or favourable, contrary (unfavourable), and balanced (neutral).

Results
The first results are referred to the clipping (see, Table 3, a summary of the main results). They are quantifiable and tangible results and are obtained through the media conference. Over 15 media outlets attended it, from local journalists to correspondents from the national and international media. It lasted for almost two hours, and its media impact can be seen in the 73 publications counted in the period between December 12 th and 21 st 2018. Almost 76% of the mentions were published between December 12 th and 14 th 2018 in Spain, Germany, Romania, and Italy.
The impact of the media conference was obtained from the two clippings referred to in the "Materials and methods" section. As we said, the main differences between the clippings from Acceso and our own, apart from the quantity collected, was that our own clippings included media from Spain and abroad (Italy, Romania, and Germany). 6 This international dimension was positive for the reputation of the project as it provided greater visibility. The headlines issued by the publications of these three countries were always neutral, highlighting the importance of the medical success achieved. In addition, texts echoed the project name and keywords as ONCOen3D and sentences of these publications reflect the media release.
The Acceso clipping service revealed 12 appearances in newspapers, six on radio, and two on television. In addition, all the appearances were in the news sections. The authors own clipping 7 showed 53 media impacts. The media type can be classified between traditional media (television, radio and press) and online media. On the one hand, in the traditional media, 16 news items were collected in newspapers (hard copies); seven news items, on radios; four news items, on television; and one in daily supplements (hard copies). On the other hand, in the online media, there were 11 news items on specialized websites; seven on news websites; four on association websites; two on company websites; and one on a blog.
The Acceso clipping showed a Spanish AVE calculation of €42,051.00 (see Appendix B). In terms of media, television had the lowest impact, and registered the lowest AVE, although results have a high value (€8,000). On the contrary, press (hard copies) was the media registering the highest AVE (€25,577), and radio, showed a low AVE compared to the number of impacts (€8,474).
In most cases, the information published in the media was in the society section (11 times). It was also divulged in the local news section (five times), on the cover (twice) and in opinion (once). In radio and television, it always formed part of the society section. The data collected demonstrate the wide context given to the information, as the news items were related to politics, new technologies, medicine, science, research and knowledge transfer.
The information about the project was published in nine different newspapers (hard copies) that cover three regions of Spain such as Catalonia, Galicia and Castilla y León. As for radio and television coverage, it was at the regional level.
The secondly most important results were referred to the tone of the news items. The majority of them were positive or neutral (Figure 2). Publications in interview format contributed particularly to the positive tone of communications. Interviews provided more time devoted to the explanation of scientists who used this moment to facilitate a better and more relaxed comment on the meaning of ONCOen3D.
No negative publications were detected. In summary, most of the information followed the principle of journalistic neutrality (82,19%); and the information generated was written in a positive tone (17,81%) in most media that have echoed ONCOen3D.
Thirdly, the research carried out dealt with the similarity between the headlines published and those emitted by the communication team through the media kit. Most of the news items showed a high coincidence with the words that appeared in the headline of the media release. Specifically, the words "cancer", "3D print" and "UdG" were repeated. The 3D print system was noted in many publications, especially in specialist blogs, as well as the keywords "achievement", "progress" or "fight". It should be noted that 77.3% of published headlines reproduced most of the keywords of the media release title. Only 22.6% of the observed media chose to write a different headline than the one delivered ( Figure 3).
As a coda to the media strategy, the originality of the project spurred the interest of the company that manufactures the printers we used to produce the scaffolds to isolate cancer cells. They presented our candidacy for the international "3D Printing Academy Award 2019", where ONCOen3D won the award in the category of Best Health Application. This was largely due to the international coverage given to the project and its findings. The award was granted by popular vote, namely the stakeholders in the 3D-print sector, who assessed our use of the technique as "very important". The media conference provided us with local and international renown for both general and specialist audience.

Discussion and conclusions
One of the strengths of this article is the description of a practical example. Answering Q1, the article describes how to convert a scientific success in a news item. It is explained in a simple way to be understood and, therefore, used by non-specialists in communication. It may serve as a reference model to disseminate the scientific research. Disseminating the results of a scientific research and creating communication plans to publish them are key elements that are demanded in application forms of funded investigation projects. Helping to make this process easier for nonspecialists in communication is one of the principles of our work.

Figure 2. News items tone in the ONCOen3D media release. 8
Source: Authors based on data from Acceso and own clippings.
The steps to follow to effectively convert a scientific milestone into a news story have been based in our case on the paradigm of strategic planning of Public Relations, RACE (Matilla, 2018). First of all, it is necessary to gather quality information about the scientific accomplishment and explain it in comprehensible language that can be understood by a general public. Secondly, it would be necessary to build a storytelling by organizing the information in a journalistic manner. The more informative the text that is written by the communication management team, the more chances we have of being reproduced by the media. Thirdly, it is necessary to create a media kit with this information and other additional data and send it to the media. At this stage of the process, it is important that the communication to media is made from an institution to give it more prestige and therefore credibility, as has been justified in the body of the article (Costa Sánchez, 2008;Guzmán Do Nascimento & Rodríguez Díaz, 2016).
In addition, it is also pertinent to emphasize the important role that traditional PR techniques continue to play. Media conferences and media releases do not require a high financial investment, facilitating their use by scientific research groups that wish to disseminate their work in the media. In fact, "media relations is one of the main tasks of the public relations practitioners", as Atabek and Alikilic (2020, p. 77) state, and as this article, confirms. In today's global, online world, where fake information abounds, it is necessary to ensure access to the main news sources, which are examples of informative veracity. Finally, and following the scheme applied in this article, the evaluation phase of the generated publicity begins. It is time to apply the tool developed in this research, Effective Cost Return, which allows calculating the return of a communication action taking into account the tangible and intangible elements effectively.
The second starting question (Q2) of the article is also answered in the research. But the theoretical framework has already shown that it cannot be answered simply. How much the generated publicity would cost if it had to be paid for can be solved with the addition of the elements analysed in the article. Even so, the application of the Effective Cost Return (ECR), and therefore the sum of tangible and intangible elements in the specific example, ONCOen3D, shows that with only one media conference (well-timed: week of the marathon against cancer on Catalan public TV) it is possible to make visible a research project (unknown until then) of a medium-sized University. For this reason, it is important to note that a visibility of 73 impacts in the media, which reproduce the headline issued by the media release almost verbatim, is a great success. The information that appears is mostly informative and therefore the headlines are neutral (82.19%). This indicates the interest of journalists in the communicated event, but also demonstrates the Source: Authors, based on data from Acceso and own clippings.
effectiveness of the message constructed and sent by the ONCOen3D communication team: the headline summarized the central idea of the message (very directly), promoting that the scientific communication must be able to produce headlines that are both informative and comprehensible.
We should add here that many media mentions appeared on the front page or cover, the pages with highest impact. The media release was successful because it combined two essential factors: the cause was good (how to multiply low-cost triple-negative breast cancer medical experiments), and the storytelling compelling. All this was positively perceived by the media, which echoed the message. Certainly, the advertising market does not suit all cases, and even with the necessary financial resources, PR may be the best way to raise societal awareness of a project such as ONCOen3D.
If the campaign had to be paid for, it would have cost more than 42,000 euros in media insertions in Spain, plus the cost of insertions in the media in Germany, Italy and Romania, which were the international speakers of ONCOen3D. The reputation achieved by disseminating the cancer research project reached, thanks to online communication, to the professional sector of 3D printing. ONCOen3D won, by popular vote, the first international award for medical application of 3D printing, promoted by the same sector. This is a powerful indicator of how knowledge transfer from the University can be achieved. In addition, it has placed this university biomedical project in a very conducive position from which to approach future patrons and to increase donations that should make triple-negative Breast Cancer Research viable.
Regarding the theoretical framework (Q3), it is obvious that does not exist a theoretical consensus on which metrics should be used to measure the return on investment in communication and public relations (López del Castillo-Wilderbeek, 2020; Meng & Berger, 2012). Therefore, it is important to publish articles like this because it built a proposal to calculate the return (ECR) and also demonstrate, with an example, that the proposal created is viable and effective.
As a conclusion, and after studying all the authors mentioned in the theoretical framework, it is clear that it is necessary to add tangible and intangible elements to calculate the return of a PR action. These tangible and intangible elements will be different depending on the needs of the calculation. Several authors consulted (Cook & Talluri, 2004;Meng & Berger, 2012) agree that the return of a PR action must be calculated from the sum of both tangible and intangible elements. An intangible can be the tone of the recognition achieved (positive, negative or neutral) after communicating a scientific event, but also the approach of the news generated, or the space that a media gives to news that has been sent to the editorial office, or whether or not it carries textual citations, or supporting images. The communication team can work on these various attributes to ensure the convenient tone of the information published. As tangible elements, the concept of savings is discussed, because a public relations action to generate publicity involves a monetary savings. That is to say, the unpaid impact achieved in the media ensures coverage and transmission of scientific information that would be impossible to finance if it had to be paid for through advertising. Despite the fact, as we mentioned before, that funded research projects ask for dissemination plans, the research budget can never allocate, as is logical, large sums of money for communication. ONCOen3D demonstrates how a good reputation can be obtained without having to spend large sums of money. 9 This research shows how necessary it is to disseminate science (locally or internationally). The conversion of a scientific discovery into information to be disseminated to general public is aligned with the theory of self-determination (Coccia & Benati, 2018). Gaining reputation (intangible) among public opinion gives credibility and reliability, therefore, rigor to science. Although in the future, we will intend to study how the public perceive scientific information, for the moment, we must focus on protagonists: scientists. This is a particularly important point when the research is carried out from a local territory, far from the large international research centres, because it contributes to generating a public opinion favourable to the work of local researchers. In this way, professionals receive an intrinsic reward for the work they carry out. This generates high personal satisfaction and greater self-confidence. Furthermore, dissemination of scientific milestones facilitates the way for more funding for research and therefore makes research groups more visible.
In this line, the article creates a path of policy implications. Universities, as public institutions, could promote training activities and support the multidisciplinary of their research teams, so that scientific findings reach much more of the population. In fact, the University of Girona is already implementing training in communication skills, aimed at the staff of research teams. It is an action aligned with the transfer and collaboration plan proposed by the Spanish govern (20/12/2022). It has been approved to accelerate innovation and science at the service of society with a budget of 1.2 billion euros in 2023 (Science & Innovation Ministry, 2022).

Funding
The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes
1. To round off the impact that medical milestones news have on the population, we propose to study, in the future, how the public perceives the scientific messages they receive through the media. 2. The importance of the Covid-19 pandemic has changed news priorities around the world; our data refers to pre-pandemic times. 3. The purpose of the ONCOen3D project is to isolate triplenegative breast cancer tumor stem cells, by means of filaments called scaffolds, printed with 3D technology. This is the most aggressive type of breast cancer among young women, with the greatest degree of relapse. ONCOen3D allows testing effective and less adverse drugs in this type of cancer patient in order to turn the disease into a chronic condition over time. In the best scenario, it will contribute to its eradication. 4. As Santos and Pérez (2019) explain in their paper, the coincidence of International Weeks of a medical issue with the launch of a health campaign with a similar objective increases the amount of media coverage given to the subject. "Marató de TV3" (TV3 Telethon) is an annual telethon that raises money for charitable purposes and takes place on the Sunday before Christmas. The event is broadcast by TV3, a Catalan regional television channel, and is jointly organized by the public Televisió de Catalunya body and the Foundation La Marató de TV3. Further information at: https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/marato/ 5. This Office analyses the official circulation of members' on-and offline print media in Spain. Members are not generally the more specialized, less widely circulated media, and so official data is lacking.
6. German, Romanian and Italian media also reported the media conference. However, the impossibility of ascertaining their advertising rates, and thus the potential investment needed, meant that we have only quantified national Spanish media. 7. Lola Costa-Gálvez, PhD joined the team to collect data. 8. As explained in the methodology, this research follows the criterion of Solans-Domènech et al. (2019) to determine if a news item has a positive (favorable), negative (unfavorable) or neutral (balanced) tone. It is favorable when only benefits are mentioned, unfavorable when only risks are mentioned, and neutral when both benefits and risks are mentioned. 9. It should be noted that the project received €975 in funding from the UdG Social Council. The budget was further enhanced by regional and national funding tenders, which permitted the design of printed materials (roll-up, and triptych), and the creation of a corporate video. Apart from the media conference itself, other actions undertaken were a dissemination session in the Faculty of Medicine, where ONCOen3D was introduced to the Academy, and the design and implementation of a solidarity market called Emerging Market, in May 2019.