Reaching out and stepping up: How citizen science and RRI can enhance bioscience research
Since the onset of the COVID19 pandemic, the impact of bioscience research on all of our lives has been made far too clear. However, developments within this field of research will continue to have long-lasting impacts on the world around us long after the current pandemic, from improving food security, mitigating climate change, protecting wildlife and the environment, as well as to continued medical advancements of all types. As the world continues to collide with the field of bioscience research, it has become increasingly important to include societal actors when we approach these fields of study. ResBios and StepChange invite you to join an online conversation about how RRI and citizen science can be used to enhance research, with a particular focus on open science and public engagement in the fields of bioscience research. By combining our shared experiences, we aim to demonstrate the theory and practice of employing these principles while discussing future challenges.
We are organising an hybrid scientific session at the Ocean Science Meeting, 27 Feb - 4 March 2022 on ‘The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow’ and are inviting you to submit an abstract by 29 September 2021. Please find more details of the session below. OD11 The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow Keywords: Citizen science, marine data, dataflow, interoperability, acceptance, engagement, policy, data management, validation, end user needs, sustainability, impact Organizers: Patrick Gorringe, patrick.gorringe@smhi.se, James Sprinks, jsprinks@earthwatch.org.uk, Peter Thijsse, peter@maris.nl, Emilie Breviere, emilie.breviere@smhi.se Citizen science is a particularly impactful channel to collect data and its utility has been proven on small scales, yet the groundbreaking, and absolutely necessary, potential of citizen science has yet to be realized. Over the last decade, marine citizen science projects have provided a cost-effective means to collect extensive data sets covering vast spatio-temporal scales where conventional data collection is limited in operation, such as coastal seas. However many initiatives fail to be sustainable, and fail to reach acceptance of their data by scientists and by policy makers. To be efficient and successful a project should provide data with sufficient quality, structure and availability to be used by professionals and ensure that citizen scientists realize and appreciate the impact of their contribution towards the understanding of the scientific big picture. When studying the flow of citizen science data, it follows a series of steps from the providers to the users, via data aggregators. The essential steps of this process are the acquisition, management, flow in key infrastructure, evaluation and impact analyses, use in ocean models, research and forecasting, and public visualization. The objective of the co-organizers is to provide a session during which participants will share experiences on successes and failures, needs and limitations in the data flow chain. The session wishes to be a unique niche for the numerous actors of the data flow in marine citizen science initiatives to meet and exchange. It will explore current and future collaborations, hear from invited experts about wider citizen science initiatives and discuss how marine data aggregators in its next phase can more systematically link with citizen science to not only expand the data provision from citizen science, but also find ways to encourage citizen science to work closer with data aggregators across the full value chain.
The annual conference of the European Science Engagement Association (EUSEA) is aimed at researchers and practitioners in the fields of science communication and citizen science. This year's edition will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of EUSEA. On this occasion, no conference fees will be charged for participation. During this event, topics such as the importance of citizen and societal engagement in Horizon Europe and the perspectives on public engagement outside of Europe will be tackled. In addition, you can also attend four interactive workshops focused on new and exciting ways of science communication.
What’s new in citizen science training: from open science to public engagement
EU-Citizen.Science contains a wide array of free, self-directed training modules on citizen science on its Moodle page. The themes of the training modules range from introduction to citizen science over research design and methods, engagement and impact to communication and regulations and ethics. At this event, we will showcase three of these training modules and offer the opportunity to meet the trainers who developed them. We will launch the final version of the EU-Citizen.Science platform and show its new features. Finally, the winners of the #MonthOfTheProjects campaign will be presented.
Save the Dates: Grace final webinars
As the GRACE project comes to an end, project partners will share their findings and provide stakeholders with useful knowledge to implement RRI in research performing and funding organisations by organising a set of eight thematic webinars. From 26 October to 14 December, these webinars will each address a different topic related to GRACE, with the participation of experts inside and outside of the project. Topics will include: (1) Main considerations to take into account at the start of an RRI project; (2) Making the case for public engagement; (3) GEP in Research Funding organisations; (4) Public Engagement from the research funding organisations’ perspective; (5) Different approaches to Evaluation; (6) Bottom-up RRI initiatives; (7) Ethics and Data Protection in humanities research; (8) RRI and Sustainability.
Citizen Science for the Oceans: From observation to information - towards digital twins of the ocean
In this webinar you will learn about citizen science activities related to the oceans. We will use the case of jelly fish as an example, start with the observations done by citizens using mobile apps. Then you learn how the data can be integrated in systems, including the use of standards making the data, in this case biological data, interoperable. You will also learn how to approach making the apps themselves. As NextGEOSS already has citizen science data catalogued on the data hub, you will now learn how we will expand this with the help from among others Earthwatch through their contribution to the ILIAD project. This webinar aims to reach Earth observation professionals and students, Citizen science public and private organisations, App makers, ocean advocates, marine environmentalist, oceanographers, ecologists.
ORION Open Science Final Conference
The conference will consist of two parts of 3 hours each: 27 September - Co-creation, engagement and dialogue – Sharing experiences Get practical hands-on tips and tricks to engage the public in science and how to embed Open Science practices in your organisation. The session will highlight tools; citizen science activities, co-creation methodologies, funding frameworks, action plans and training materials developed and tested during the ORION Open Science project. 28 September - Embedding Open Science practices at national, European and institutional level Join policy makers and other stakeholders from across Europe to discuss ways to embed open science practices at national, European and institutional level as well as future collaboration opportunities.
Learn About Project Noah's Online Community & Moths of the World Mission
Join Michael Sarill of Project Noah for a virtual program about the popular online global community of nature enthusiasts and its collaboration with National Moth Week. Michael will lead aspiring citizen scientists through Project Noah’s Moths of the World mission, which provides a platform for uploading and publishing photos, creating a personal nature journal and learning about the natural world on projectnoah.org and its social media platforms. This virtual event is free and open to the public. It will be presented via Zoom.
Learning Data Naturally SLA (Special Libraries Association) 2021
Public participation in scientific research through citizen science is gaining popularity across the world. Through data collection, citizen scientists contribute to the creation of open and research-grade data and build data literacy skills. Academic librarians are often uniquely positioned to promote citizen science projects both in the classroom and among community advocates, connecting researchers with life-long learners for the benefit of open science. During the on-demand session and throughout the conference, participants and attendees will ‘naturally’ engage with the process of science and learn data literacy skills such as data collection and sharing, by contributing to this dataset. Participants in the session will also be encouraged to pose questions, analyze data, draw conclusions, and communicate findings by exploring the data collected by conference attendees from around the world. Sign up/log into iNaturalist and join the project.
Tilburg Public Library and …
The right to contribute to environmental information, a year later: lessons from the SensJus project
The SensJus project would like to invite you all to a hybrid workshop to be held at LocHal, the beautiful Tilburg Public Library, NL, titled ‘The right to contribute to environmental information, a year later: lessons from the SensJus project’ which will take place on July 8, 15:00-17:00 CEST. Find the detailed program at https://sensingforjustice.webnode.it/l/sensjus-nnhrr-workshop/. The event is organized by SensJus and supported by the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research. Speakers will be there at the library with a limited number of ‘distanced’ audience. If you are interested in joining physically in Tilburg, please let me know as places are limited. For everyone else, the livestream and recording will be accessible at https://www.youtube.com/user/BBLTHK. Audience will be able to submit questions in advance to us and we will address them during the event. For registration and submitting questions, please reply to this email. In alternative, audience will be able to post questions and comments live in the YouTube chat. PROGRAM 15:00-15:30: roundtable, what is a right, what is environmental information in a word/drawing/action 15:30-16:00: the concept of a ‘right to contribute to environmental information’ a year after, lessons from the SensJus project 16:00-16:30: experts from environmental justice, social movements and data activism join the debate 16:30-16:45: performance break, ‘the civic sentinel on stage’, performed by theatre actor 16:45-17:00: active drawing on the right to contribute, collective commenting 17:00-17:30: concerned citizens share their viewpoints from local instances to global 17:30-18:00: launching the vignette-based story of civic monitoring in Basilicata There will be drawing, performing, beyond the inspiring pitches from experts and member of communities. This way, we will make sure to ‘engage’ with the space of the library and with the virtual audience! During the workshop, we will present a graphic novel recounting the story of a civic sentinel that we recently realized. Free e-download here: https://sensingforjustice.webnode.it/l/fumetto/.
Call for abstracts Open Track on PANDEMIC AND STS - 8th STS Conference
We warmly encourage you to send your abstracts for the following track: How to Protect Communities from Sars CoV-2 through Co-production of Health and the Design of Commons-Based Ecosystems by Adopting Distributed Ledger Technologies? Convenors: Guido Boella, Vincenzo Giorgino, Valeria Poli, Sowelu Avanzo. Please, see the complete call for the submission guidelines below, or consult the complete list of tracks. The 8th STS Italia Conference will be hosted by the University of Trieste, Italy, June 17 through 19, 2021, by the Italian Society of Science and Technology Studies. It is our pleasure to announce that the calls for abstract are now open until December 18th, 2020. The conference will be an opportunity to present empirical and theoretical work from a variety of disciplines: sociology, anthropology, design, economics, history, law, philosophy, psychology and semiotics. The focal theme of the 8th STS Italia Conference will be "Dis/Entangling Technoscience: Vulnerability, Responsibility and Justice”. This broad theme refers to the complex and ambivalent role of technoscience and innovation in constituting societies – making possibilities flourish, but also creating new vulnerabilities. The conference will include 28 tracks, which are clustered into five thematic streams. The tracks focus on several topics, including: biomedicine, digital platforms and media, work and organizations, expertise and public policy, ethics of technology and innovation, and governance of science and technology at large. Abstracts (written in English, or in Italian in case of tracks in two language) should be submitted by December, 18 to the conference email address (stsitaliaconf@gmail.com) and to the emails of convenors' selected track. Track Convenor(s) will be responsible for reviewing, accepting/rejecting and organising submissions into their track. THEMATIC STREAMS · Biomedicine, bodies and technoscience; · Platforms, digital technologies and media environments; · Rethinking science, technology and innovation: emerging challenges; · Including, excluding and connecting through / within technoscience; · Governing and reshuffling technoscience and innovation processes; · Open Track: Science and Technology Studies in Post-socialist countries/in Central and Eastern European countries; · Open Track on PANDEMIC AND STS: How to Protect Communities from Sars CoV-2 through Co-production of Health and the Design of Commons-Based Ecosystems by Adopting Distributed Ledger Technologies?
INOS Project Event – Integrating Citizen Science at Universities: From ‘What’ to ‘How
Should science focus on issues of public importance/respond to public concerns? What are the benefits of citizen involvement in scientific research? What are the pitfalls? These and many more questions are frequently raised by those engaging or wishing to engage in Citizen Science (CS). This two-day workshop is designed to provide input into what CS is and how CS projects can be implemented in universities and research libraries. The workshop will focus on: • The basics of CS and its benefits; • Requirements to take into consideration when involving citizen scientists in research projects; • Examples and benefits of integrating CS into educational programmes; • Practical guidance on how to develop and implement CS projects; • Examples of CS research projects. The workshop will be of a highly participatory nature, with participants required to work in small groups during their own time. The first session will take place at 10.00 CEST on the 2nd of June, followed by a session at 14:00 CEST on the 4th of June.