Nine projects will be continuing their actions in 2023 and beyond

EU-Citizen.Science
Jan. 18, 2022, 10:50 a.m.

Nine projects are still at their beginning and will be present in the citizen science landscape until 2023 and beyond

CSI-COP Citizen scientists investigating cookies and app GDPR compliance

CSI-COP’s free informal education course,’ Your Right to Privacy Online’, is available in English from EU-Citizen.Science’s MOOC platform here: https://moodle.eu-citizen.science/. The course is also available in English and other translations from CSI-COP project website here: https://csi-cop.eu/informal-education-mooc/. The project is progressing with raising awareness of citizens’ rights to privacy online. This is through online and when possible, in-person workshops, most recently online 26 October, in Athens 21 November. Information on forthcoming workshops is here: https://bit.ly/3dCBXDL. The workshops equip learners with knowledge and practical skills to better manage personal data across the Internet by refusing tracking cookies in websites and preventing unnecessary permissions in apps on smart devices.

More than eighteen months since the in-person project kick-off, Coventry-UK February 2020, CSI-COP’s consortium are hosting a blended Year2-end meeting for partners and advisory board members to attend in Patras- Greece, or online. CSI-COP sought a 12-month extension to the project due to the disruption to planned face-to-face activities in Year 1 and Year 2. CSI-COP will meet to strategise how we can work more closely with sister citizen science projects and to increase interest from the general public in joining CSI-COP’s project as privacy citizen scientists.

COESO Connecting research and society

COESO is a three-year project (2021-2023) funded by the SWAFS program and celebrating its first anniversary! Coordinated by the Ecole of the Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and OpenEdition, it gathers 18 partners from 6 European countries to develop and sustain citizen science research in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). 

A key part of our work is supporting citizen science projects involving SSH that use a “participatory research” approach: ten pilot projects will receive grants of up to 50,000 Euros. The first round of pilots started in 2021 and our next round begins in 2022 (call for new pilots is open until January 30th!). Our pilots will be involved in co-design workshops in 2022 to develop our Virtual Ecosystem for Research Activation (VERA), where researchers and citizens can find each other and collaborate. They will share experiences about effective public engagement and have already started showcasing their work through a dedicated blog on Hypotheses.org: https://coeso.hypotheses.org/category/blogposts/pilots

COESO is engaging with funders to increase funding opportunities for SSH citizen science projects (see our Landscape study on Citizen Science and our Funding Advocacy plan): stay tuned for the next actions in 2022!

1 year into TIME4CS

TIME4CS is a EU-funded project, started in January 2021, which ultimately aims at supporting the institutional adoption of Citizen Science in Research Performing Organizations. In its first year, the project developed a framework based on four different areas requiring an intervention (Intervention Areas) to trigger an institutional change. In each area, some examples of concrete actions (Grounding Actions) that RPOs can undertake to lay the foundation of long-term institutional changes were identified, thanks to the analysis of the history and activities of TIME4CS experienced partners (Front-Runners) in the institutional adoption of Citizen Science. The analysis led to the identification of a pool of 24 Grounding Actions (D1.2 Best practices repository of TIME4CS Front-Runners). Such actions were the basis for the development of personalized roadmaps to promote CS practices in 4 partner organizations (Implementers) (D2.1: Compilation of roadmaps and Grounding Actions for the Implementers - First Version) starting now to carry out tailored actions to make CS a research practice supported in their institutions. TIME4CS will monitor the process to develop a set of indicators for institutional changes in RPOs towards an increased support of CS. A first version of those indicators has already been established and it will be refined in the next two years (D5.1: Evaluation and Impact Assessment Plan). At the same time, TIME4CS is working to better understand the process of making CS initiatives a sustainable practice in research, through a collection of Case Studies. Thanks to the analysis of 30 institutions evaluated across eight domains of indicators to explain the institutional changes to support CS (D1.1: Collection of Case Studies of institutional adoption of CS), TIME4CS expect to learn more about success factors for the institutional adoption of CS. The study is still ongoing and a report about factors contributing to institutional adoption of CS will be published soon. Finally, TIME4CS is developing training activities aimed at researchers and RPOs staff members, to share the project’s knowledge with other RPOs interested in enabling the institutional and cultural changes needed for CS. All project resources are available on TIME4CS community on Zenodo.

FRANCIS Frugal innovation by Citizens for Citizens

Since Feb 2021, the FRANCIS (Frugal Innovation by Citizen and for Citizens) project has been running. So far, the project gained an overview of insights into the actual state of research in Citizen Science and Frugal Innovation via a literature review and exciting interviews with European SwafS projects and frugal innovators like Sarah Collins from Wonderbag, etc.

There were also discussion roundtables with citizen representatives and industry reflecting the research findings in the literature and adapted them to the FRANCIS challenges to get recommendations for a successful implementation of the challenge concept.

Additionally, FRANCIS will develop an assessment framework of the frugal innovation challenges with RRI and SDG indicators to force the social and environmental view on the process and product evaluation in the industry. The first results of our work will be released on the FRANCIS homepage in spring 2022 along with the first draft of the Citizen Frugal Innovation Framework.

A market analysis provided by the first challenge industry coordinator BSH Turkey jumpstarts the first challenge topic “Culinary world & home care”. Persona analysis for groups such as minimalists, senior citizens, troubled families will be specifically addressed in the challenge.

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YouCount Youth Citizen Science

One of Europe’s most pressing challenges is to increase social inclusion for young people. The YouCount project aims to address this challenge through Youth Citizen Social Science. With that purpose, in 2021 ten different cases were set up across nine European countries. Each case focuses on a different place-based challenge related to social inclusion for young people and is made up of a team involving established researchers and young citizen scientists aged between 14 and 30 years. Through their work during 2022 and 2023, new knowledge and innovations on social inclusion for young people will be co-created – within and across cases. By 2024, the project will provide evidence of the actual outcomes of this novel approach to citizen science. To engage with YouCount or follow its activities, please visit the project’s website (www.youncountproject.eu) and join the growing community of interest. There you can also sign up to YouCount’s quarterly newsletter, featuring young citizen scientists and other members of the project in each issue and informing of past and future activities. @YouCountProject is also active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Photo by Ildfluene (Fireflies), for YouCount

INCENTIVE Citizen Science Hubs

The H2020 INCENTIVE project (GA. 101005330) addresses the lack of upstream citizen participation in research and innovation. The project strives to achieve this by institutionalising Citizen Science in 4 European Universities (UAB, UT, AUTH, VGTU). This will happen through the creation and operation of Citizen Science Hubs: spaces within the universities’ premises where citizens and local stakeholders can connect with researchers and scientists and become empowered to identify societal challenges and co-define solutions through Citizen Science. The final aim of INCENTIVE is to ground the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation at the regional ecosystem of pilot universities. The project kicked off in February 2021, rallying 9 partners from 7 European countries, and so far, it has accomplished two main targets: (i) mapping thoroughly the institutional profile and needs of each pilot university, as well as of external Quadruple Helix stakeholders, and (ii) performing a series of co-creation workshops with local stakeholders to conclude on the structure, values and activities of the Hubs. Next year, the Incentive team will identify tools to incentivise citizens to participate, define the practical activities of Hubs, and create a methodological roadmap for replicating Hubs across Europe.

Step Change: what happened in the first nine months

The Step Change project was launched in March 2021. The project aims to explore the potential of citizen science and to formulate recommendations and instruments for better cementing this approach within research and innovation institutions. Along its timeline, Step Change will implement five case studies in the fields of health, energy and environment.

In the last few months, the University of Primorska has begun developing an app for wildlife data collection in Slovenia, the University of Tor Vergata has carried out a systematic review about citizen science activities related to COVID-19, Women Engage for a Common Future has developed a podcast about the tenant electricity model, Action for Rural Women’s Empowerment in Uganda has mapped and recruited stakeholders while promoting the project via a video, and the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre in the UK has started the recruitment of participants for a clinical experiment in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

In May 2021, Science for Change drafted a set of Scoping Tools and Support Materials, which offered indications for recruiting citizen scientists, as well as engaging and mapping stakeholders. The Centre for Social Innovation developed a training format for trans-disciplinary activities, engagement and recruitment. Meanwhile, Aarhus University in Demark and Knowledge & Innovation established contacts with members of the Citizen Science Initiatives, to co-design a customized evaluation framework.

In November 2021, the first Steering Committee Meeting of the project was held. Thereafter,  training on trans-disciplinary working and communication was started. Currently, Project partners are finalizing research protocols, engaging with stakeholders and recruiting citizen scientists. Although this is quite a demanding winter, we hopefully look forward to a good harvest in spring 2021.

ROSiE Responsible Open Science in Europe

ROSiE partners are excited to conclude the first year of the project with a wide spectrum of ongoing activities! WP3 partners have appointed a Stakeholder Forum that already has 22 distinguished members and it will continuously expand its membership. WP3 partners have held meetings with several of its members to introduce ROSiE and identify areas of common interest. At the same time, WP4 partners have already organized two meetings in the context of the Cross-SwafS Stakeholders Forum. WP5 partners are currently busy with two main tasks: (a) to map the different Open Science and Open Access national policies in Europe that will be communicated via the so-called country cards and (b) to provide a definition for “Responsible Open Science policy”. WP6 is setting the foundations of the project’s Knowledge Hub that is bound to combine all knowledge that is going to be gathered by ROSiE consortium and stakeholders and funnel it via a user-friendly interface. Finally, WP7 partners have already finalized the Didactic Framework for teaching materials, defining specific learning outcomes and indicators for their achievement, as well as topics for different groups of trainees. Currently, the work on the development of teaching and learning materials has been initiated.

Photo by Ildfluene (Fireflies), for YouCount