The ECSA Conference 2022 will be held from October 5-8 in Berlin, Germany. This year researchers from all disciplines, scientists, practitioners, activists, funders, policymakers, non-governmental organizations, artists, and other interested citizens worldwide...
Over the past few months, our colleague Miriam Calvera-Isabal (UPF) has presented the CS Track project and our research findings at different conferences and project meetings, including TEASPIL, H2O Learn and LASI Spain. She explained how CS Track has centralized...
CS Track and ECSA teams are organising a half-day symposium under the theme "Understanding the nature of Citizen Science in a rapidly changing world" on 8 October, 9:00-13:00 CET in Berlin. This symposium aims at sharing these results and findings and discussing their...
Online Workshop on Thursday, 7 July 2022, 14:00 – 15:30 CET In this installment of our webinar series, CS Track researchers will share tips and tricks for writing informative and engaging project descriptions and analyse concrete examples (both positive and negative)...
The CS Track team has released a new report entitled Models to identify background factors associated with the CS activity. It introduces how the CS Track team created 6 models with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of how different factors (e.g. gender, age, roles in CS) are associated with different forms of participation in CS activities.
Societal impact is increasingly central to scientific research. How does new knowledge contribute to solving major issues in society? And how can we gain knowledge that is actually beneficial for society? Scientists are motivated to put their knowledge into practice,...
The 4th ECSA Conference taking place from 5-8 October in Berlin, Germany runs under the cross-cutting theme of Citizen Science for Planetary Health. The concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on...
In order to better tailor our work to the needs of our different stakeholders, the CS Track team led a series of focus group discussions in September. These focus groups directly involved over 30 people coming from different stakeholder communities including policy-makers and officers, platform and support agency representatives, people interested in CS from an educational perspective and CS project leaders, participants and researchers.
IMDEA Energy is a research center created by the Community of Madrid in Spain, whose objectives are to promote and carry out R&D activities related to energy, especially for the promotion of renewable energies and clean energy technologies that allow progress towards a sustainable energy system.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed an opportunity to improve the outcomes of citizen science in response to emerging challenges.
Online Workshop on Tuesday 15 March 2022 14:00 – 15:30 CET This workshop is about exploring a web-based tool (analytics workbench) that can be used to collect information about citizen science projects. It is based on current work in the European CS Track project,...
It is expected that the discussion boards in online CS projects provide a space for knowledge-building.
How has the citizen science community responded to the COVID-19 pandemic? A content analysis-based study examining projects’ characteristics and activities.
We are delighted to announce that our team members are going to be presenting at the Engaging Citizen Science (25-26 April) and ECSA 2022 (5-8 October) conferences. A poster "Individual Learning Outcomes in Citizen Science Projects" will be presented and the analytics...
Citizen science research has become a popular approach in youth education. Findings suggest that females are more motivated to learn from the project. Participation in the project slightly increased science interest, but not science efficacy. However, it did increase both political interest and efficacy.
Huma Shah is an Assistant Professor and Researcher in AI at Coventry University in the UK. She is a passionate defender of online privacy. She is currently directing the science on the EU-funded CSI-COP project. This aims to raise awareness of citizens’ right to privacy online, and to mobilise citizen scientists from across Europe and beyond to investigate the different types of trackers in websites and apps.
We're delighted to announce that our colleagues Christine Urban and Michael Strähle (Wissenschaftsladen Wien - Science Shop Vienna) will be presenting a poster and a paper at the 7th Austrian Citizen Science Conference. The paper will tackle the issue as to why...
Chimp & See is one of the projects of the Zooniverse platform, which is one of the largest citizen science web portals, was initiated in 2015 by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The aim of the project is to learn more about the culture, population size and demography of chimpanzees in specific regions of Africa.
Biodiversity citizen science projects investigate, for example, which species of plants or animals exist in an area and how many individuals of each species live in that area. Such projects involve citizen scientists in identifying and monitoring biological diversity and collecting biodiversity data. With the help of citizen scientists, researchers can collect large amounts of such data that they would not be able to collect on their own. We wanted to know how citizen scientists benefit from their participation in biodiversity citizen science projects.
Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decade. As a result defining citizen science and its boundaries remains a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature—for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered citizen science.
Can knowledge foster positive attitudes toward science in CS projects? Research on the public understanding of science has found that the relationship between attitudes toward science and general knowledge of scientific content is only small. We investigated whether this relationship and its direction is stronger in CS projects because these projects address specific knowledge such as wildlife ecology. Our findings indicated that citizens’ knowledge about wildlife improved their attitudes toward science later on.
Citizen science entails the participation of the public and professional scientists in scientific activities in order to expand scientific knowledge and understanding. This involves participants adopting different roles for completing specific tasks which can shape overall learning experiences.
Stefanie Schuerz, Barbara Kieslinger, Teresa Schäfer and Katja Mayer all work at the Zentrum für Soziale Innovation GmbH/Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) in Austria which has been at the cutting edge of Citizen Science in Europe for many years.
Citizen science (CS) activities have increasingly become diverse of both subject matter and objectives, creating diverse opportunities for people representing a variety of socio-economic backgrounds as well as experiences to come together and participate in science activities.
Identifying who takes part in citizen science projects and understanding what motivates them are key aspects in building our understanding of citizen science. These aspects are at the heart of a recent White Paper published by the CS Track project which highlights interest in the theme, contributing to scientific research and opportunities to learn as key factors when it comes to motivation.
The recent JRC report on Citizen Science Strategies and Initiatives in Europe highlights the different ways in which Citizen Science is supported and understood in Europe. The results of its survey show how Citizen Science is evolving and where the main barriers to its successful implementation lie.
Social networks, such as Twitter, are increasingly being investigated to capture online interactive participation. Although citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, it is not known whether the educational aspect is considered in citizen science projects.