EU-Citizen.Science · The Platform for Sharing, Initiating, and Learning Citizen Science in Europe

Citizen Science is a rapidly expanding and diversifying field of innovation with significant implications for, and potential benefits to, society, policy, and various academic research areas. This heterogeneity leads currently to a fragmented and not fully coordinated European Citizen Science landscape. The ambition of EU-Citizen.Science is to build, fill, and promote a sustainable platform and mutual learning space providing different tools, best practice examples and relevant scientific outcomes that are collected, curated, and made accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens over scientific institutions up to politicians and public media in order to mainstream Citizen Science in Europe. This breakthrough will be pursued through three interconnected lines of activity: (i) coordination of citizen science actions and leveraging of existing resources in the presently fragmented landscape of Citizen Science in Europe, (ii) engagement of quadruple helix stakeholders at all levels (local, national and European), and (iii) creation of a mutual learning space and a set of comprehensive co-designed training modules for the different target audiences. Moreover, following a transparent, open and inclusive approach, EU-Citizen.Science will promote interdisciplinary, cross-border, cross-sector collaboration, and give rise to significant social innovation and new business models through the creation of new partnerships and the provision of novel sustainability-supporting tools. The EU.Citizen.Science project involves 14 partners and 9 third parties, representing 14 European Member States and a variety of stakeholders ranging from universities, NGOs, local authorities, CSOs and natural history museums, along with several other project supporters. Many of the partners are already engaged in other SwafS projects related to RRI, co-creation and citizen science, as well as numerous initiatives at national or local level.