ECS Collaboration Session - Citizen Science and Ethics

Do we ever stop to consider the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise within citizen science and other participatory processes? And what are the causes of, and possible solutions to, such issues? Are our organisations even adequately equipped to navigate these issues? Join our Collaboration Session on ethics in citizen science to discuss and work through these key issues. For this session, we will welcome the contributions of Stefanie Schuerz and Matimba Swana, who will share some of their experiences working on this topic. The session will consist of a presentation from the speakers, as well as a participatory group activity related to the topic. Information about the speakers: Stefanie Schuerz is a sociologist who works as a researcher and project manager at the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI). Her primary focus is on evaluation and impact assessment, multi-stakeholder engagement and citizen science, research ethics and integrity, as well as data ethics and open science. Stefanie has coordinated processes for the co-design of R&I policy recommendations and has collaborated with funding agencies in the development and evaluation of ethical participatory activities. Matimba Swana is a PhD student at the University of Bristol with experience working in the UK Government Office for Science, Stemcell Technologies, and the Medical Research Network. Her research centres on cancer nanomedicine, swarm robotics, and bioethics, particularly regarding regulatory frameworks for cancer trials using nanoswarm technology, with a focus on Patient and Public Involvement. She co-founded PROTEAS to promote sustainable practices in robotics and Black and Brown in Bioethics to advance racial equity in the UK bioethics community, and serves on various committees related to cancer research and the arts.

Collaborations Workshop 2024

Collaborations Workshop 2024 (CW24) will bring together researchers, developers, innovators, managers, funders, publishers, policy makers, leaders and educators to explore best practices and the future of research software. CW24 will take place as a hybrid event from Tuesday 30 April to Thursday 2 May 2024, at the University of Warwick, UK. Registration is open via Eventbrite until Friday 5 April 2024. The full agenda can be found here. The themes of CW24 will be: Environmental Sustainability AI/ML tools for science Citizen science Each topic will be the subject of a keynote talk: Keynote 1: AI/ML Tools | Arfon Smith is a product manager at GitHub and works on integrating AI into the core GitHub experience. He also works on bringing open source to academia by improving support for scholarly work on the platform. Keynote 2: Citizen Science | Lucy Robinson leads the Community Science Programme at the Natural History Museum, London, and is an internationally recognised citizen science specialist with 15 years of experience. Keynote 3: Environmental Sustainability | Dr Kelly Widdicks is a Software Systems Architect at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and leads research on the responsible co-design of digital research infrastructure for environmental science. Further information about the keynote speakers can be found here.

Citizen science and co-design tools for cities

As part of the 2023 European Week of Regions and Cities, SOCIO-BEE will be participating in the participatory/political lab, ‘Citizen science and co-design tools for cities’, on Tuesday, 10 October 2023 at 9:30 CET in Brussels. SOCIO-BEE and nine other EU-funded projects will present the tools and resources they have developed to help communities make their cities more sustainable.

The ECS Co-Design Process in Action: Introducing the Updated eu-citizen.science Platform and API Training

We are thrilled to announce the "ECS Co-Design Process in Action: Introducing the Updated eu-citizen.science Platform and API Training", an event set to redefine the way we view the eu-citizen.science platform. This 150-minute engagement taking place on July 27, 2023, from 12:00 - 14:30 CEST, is your gateway to understanding the next generation of citizen science.This event is uniquely split into two main sections, offering flexibility to attend one part, or both, based on your interests and needs.The first part (12:00 - 13:15 CEST) is a comprehensive exploration of the ECS Co-Design Process. With an accessible and interactive format, we will delve into the details of the updated eu-citizen.science platform. Opening with a brief presentation on the overarching ECS project, we will then focus on the Co-Design Process' first cycle results, which birthed three novel services: the Project Visualisation Map, the Improved Event Section, and the Enhanced Search Engine. Each service will be presented in detail, offering a practical understanding of their functions. We invite all attendees to contribute to an engaging discussion period where we will entertain queries, comments, and thoughts on these services, as well as our next steps. This is your chance to interact directly with our platform's architects, including members of the ECSA Platform Working Group.Following a brief intermission (13:15 - 13:30 CEST), we continue with a highly informative, practical training session (13:30 - 14:20 CEST). This workshop is designed to explain API handling concepts, providing a foundation for anyone interested in unlocking the true potential of the eu-citizen.science platform. With no advanced knowledge required, the session is ideal for those wishing to establish interoperability between platforms and to use our platform's content for data visualisation exercises. This training session is particularly suitable for researchers and those looking to develop other citizen science platforms.Registration is made simple through an online form, allowing attendees to choose between attending one part, or the complete event. Whether you're a casual browser, a co-design process participant, a dedicated platform user, or an API enthusiast, this event promises something for everyone.Join us in this exciting journey as we embark on a new era of citizen science with the upgraded eu-citizen.science platform. We look forward to seeing you there.

Cos4Cloud final event: its legacy for the citizen science community

The Cos4Cloud project is coming to an end! To wrap up over three years of the project and its community, Cos4Cloud and ECSA are co-organising a final event for everyone interested to learn about the project’s main achievements, discover how to use Cos4Cloud’s products and celebrate the community that has actively contributed to the project. The event will take place online on 2nd March 2023, 15:00-16:15 CET. What can you expect during the event? 1) Learn about the main project achievements and legacy of the project for the citizen science community. 2) Discover how you can take advantage of Cos4Cloud’s products and outputs and where to find them (13 services to improve citizen observatory technologies, the co-design methodology guide, the educational guideline, etc.). 3) Celebrate the community that has actively participated in Cos4Cloud events to improve the services, the co-design methodology, and to learn how to integrate citizen science into school practice.

CoAct Final Event Week

After three exciting and intense years, CoAct is coming to an end. Citizen Social Sciences intends to collaborate equally between citizen groups and academic actors. As a consortium, we propose a new understanding of Citizen Social Science as participatory research co-designed and driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern. They become co-researchers in processes commonly dominated by academic researchers. Throughout the last three years, we brought together and further developed methods to give citizen groups an equal ‘seat at the table’ through active participation in research, from the design to the interpretation of the results and their transformation into concrete actions. But we also enabled intensive discussions and knowledge sharing regarding the framing of participation and the predominant understanding of science. All these activities generated experiences and lessons learned, which we wish to share and discuss with everyone interested in our Final Event Week. We are organising three days of knowledge sharing, reflecting, and discussing the future of CSS based on these learnings.

Cos4Cloud and its services for the citizen science community

Cos4Cloud is a EU-funded project that is co-designing, prototyping and implementing a number of new tools and services that address the technological challenges shared by citizen observatories. These services can help citizen observatories to improve data and information quality of observations and can be used as modules, so that any existing citizen science observatory will be able to choose and install the technological services they wish. In this webinar, we will give a short introduction of the project and present two of the services developed: MOBIS and FASTCAT-Cloud. MOBIS is a service to create integrative citizen science apps where you can report all your environmental and biodiversity observations in one Android or iOS app. FASTCAT (Flexible Ai System for CAmera Traps)-Cloud is an open website service that allows you to automatically filter out most unwanted pictures and video streams, keeping images of animals, and to integrate machine learning technology, among other things. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A with speakers. The webinar will last one hour. After closing the webinar we will keep the Zoom channel open for participants to ask further questions and make suggestions about how Cos4Cloud can benefit their citizen science project(s).

Citizen engagement TRANSFORMing regional R&I policymaking

Citizen engagement can strengthen trust between institutions and citizens. In the TRANSFORM project (funded under Horizon 2020) citizen science, co-design and co-creation have been applied to regional R&I decision-making in Lombardy, Catalonia, and Brussels-Capital. Through sharing of experiences and promising outcomes of citizen engagement in regional R&I policies, this participatory lab will provide examples and suggestions on how to create more open, transparent and inclusive regional R&I governance processes. Join us in an interactive session and learn more about the benefits of citizen engagement, get your questions answered by experts, share your experiences and suggestions for further applications in regional decision making. Registration opens on 30 August!

Citizen science: an approach to promote Planetary Health - 2021 PHAM

We live today in a risky society, which imposes on the current and future generations the need to know how to deal with uncertainties and the complexities of the environmental, social, political and economic systems that lead to the threat to the continuity of the human species on the planet. These uncertainties can directly affect individual and collective health, making it imperative that individuals understand the causes and consequences of global changes so that they can not only reflect, but also act individually and demand action from their representatives in the government based on that understanding and on evidence. Citizen science offers the opportunity for social participation in the generation of scientific knowledge and, at the same time, can empower individuals towards change. To discuss this issue, three distinguished guests were invited to the panel "Citizen science: an approach to promote Planetary Health": - Dr. Alan Irwin - "Citizen Science: a new knowledge politics?" - Dr. Andrea Grover – “Citizen Science for Community Resilience" - Dr. Uta When - Facilitating the co-design of purpose-driven Citizen Science for Planetary Health