This document is the third and final deliverable as part of the careables 'Ethical and Legal Requirements'. It represents the conclusive stage (Validation and Policy Recommendations') of the ethical and legal guidance provided in the careables (Made4You) project following the former tasks 'In-depth legal analysis' and 'Implementation of the legal and ethical requirements'. The present deliverable has three aims, corresponding to the following points. Evaluation of the legal requirements Provision of policy recommendations to remove barriers and foster the flourishing of open healthcare solutions in the EU Providing guidelines on Responsible Research and Innovation - RRI
Air pollution is a serious problem that is causing increasing concern among European citizens. It is responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year and considerably damages human health, agriculture, and the natural environment. Despite these facts, the readiness and power of citizens to take actions is limited. To address this challenge, the citizen science project CAPTOR was launched in 2016. Using low-cost measurement devices, citizens in three European testbeds supported the monitoring of tropospheric ozone. This paper presents the results from 53 interviews with involved residents and shows that the active involvement of individuals in a complex process such as measuring tropospheric ozone can have important impacts on their knowledge and attitudes. In an attempt to expand the benefits of low-cost air quality sensors from an individual to a regional level, certain preconditions are key. Strong support in assuring data quality, visibility of the collected data in online and offline media, broad dissemination of results, and intensified communication with political decision-makers are needed.
DISCLAIMER: The present Project Deliverable has been submitted to the European Commission for review. The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. The main aim of the evaluation and impact assessment in CoAct is to bring evidence of the impact that the project's Citizen Social Science activities have on the involved actors, such as co-researchers, citizen scientists, knowledge coalition members, and professional researchers, as well as on their socio-cultural contexts. Additionally, the formative evaluation aims at the assessment of user-acceptance factors, such as ease of use and perceived usefulness, of the involvement activities, offered materials, developed prototypes, and the research process as a whole. This input will iteratively shape our interaction activities, the materials and the prototypes, trying to detect the non-conformances that may occur during the Citizen Social Science co-research process as well as drivers for engagement and usage. In CoAct we follow a co-evaluation approach, which is a form of participatory evaluation that initiates the conversation on expectations, objectives, and impact already at the start of the project. The approach has been elaborated in the Deliverable D7.1 CoAct Impact Assessment Plan (Schäfer et al. 2020) and has raised international attention in the citizen science community. The strong interest in CoAct outreach activities with regards to our co-evaluation approach has been confirmed by participants in our webinars, workshops and the recently launched call for papers in the Special Issue "Participatory Evaluation and Impact Assessment in Citizen Science" of the fteval Journal for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation. After two years of project work, the co-evaluation efforts ...
DISCLAIMER: The present Project Deliverable has been submitted to the European Commission for review. The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. ______ The main aim of the evaluation and impact assessment in CoAct is to bring evidence of the impact that the project's citizen social science activities have on the involved actors, such as co-researchers, citizen scientists, knowledge coalition members, and professional researchers, as well as on their socio-cultural contexts. Additionally, the formative evaluation aims at the assessment of user-acceptance factors, such as ease of use and perceived usefulness, of the involvement activities, offered materials, developed prototypes, and the research process as a whole. This input will iteratively shape our interaction activities, the materials and the prototypes, trying to detect the non-conformances that may occur during the citizen social science co-research process as well as drivers for engagement and usage. In CoAct we follow a co-evaluation approach, which is a form of participatory evaluation that initiates the conversation on expectations, objectives, and impact already at the start of the project. Consequently, we have started the co-evaluation process with representatives from our three CoAct R&I Actions in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Vienna from the very beginning of the project. During the Kick-Off meeting expectations towards (co-)evaluation and anticipated challenges were discussed in separate working sessions with representatives from each of the three R&I actions; follow-up calls with the research teams served to elaborate road maps that link co-research activities to the evaluation and impact assessment. The result of this collaboration , that introduce ...
DISCLAIMER: The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. ______ The main aim of the evaluation and impact assessment in CoAct is to bring evidence of the impact that the project's citizen social science activities have on the involved actors, such as co-researchers, citizen scientists, knowledge coalition members, and professional researchers, as well as on their socio-cultural contexts. Additionally, the formative evaluation aims at the assessment of user-acceptance factors, such as ease of use and perceived usefulness, of the involvement activities, offered materials, developed prototypes, and the research process as a whole. This input will iteratively shape our interaction activities, the materials and the prototypes, trying to detect the non-conformances that may occur during the citizen social science co-research process as well as drivers for engagement and usage. In CoAct we follow a co-evaluation approach, which is a form of participatory evaluation that initiates the conversation on expectations, objectives, and impact already at the start of the project. Consequently, we have started the co-evaluation process with representatives from our three CoAct R&I Actions in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Vienna from the very beginning of the project. During the Kick-Off meeting expectations towards (co-)evaluation and anticipated challenges were discussed in separate working sessions with representatives from each of the three R&I actions; follow-up calls with the research teams served to elaborate road maps that link co-research activities to the evaluation and impact assessment. The result of this collaboration , that introduce expected outputs, intermediate and long-term outcomes on co-researchers, citizen scientists, ...
In citizen social science, citizens actively engage in research to investigate and solve challenges from their lifeworlds. As these interests are guiding the research process, we suggest employing a co-evaluation approach as a form of participatory evaluation that initiates the conversation on expectations and impact with the diverse actors involved from the onset. In the European funded research project CoAct, global social concerns such as youth employment, mental healthcare and environmental justice are addressed by three local research teams consisting of affected citizen groups, thematic and political stakeholders, and multidisciplinary academic researchers. The teams investigate and implement concrete actions and strategies to tackle these social challenges. In this contribution we reflect on first insights of co-evaluation from the three cases by applying a qualitative content analysis across different content formats, focusing primarily on the specific challenges and outcomes of citizen social science and co-evaluation. While the nature of the social issues at stake and the distinct socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded clearly mark the boundaries of comparability, overall, a shift in roles and ownership across involved actors is observable. Identifiable intermediate outcomes are e.g. an increase in awareness, knowledge, and skills amongst stakeholders, which are in the long-term expected to increase empowerment, self-determination and the quality of life of the concerned participants, and lead to the implementation of new measures and regulations at policy level. With this work we want to contribute to the canonical development of citizen social science and generate productive feedback for the research process.
Citizen science is increasingly recognized as a valid research methodology by the research community and policy makers alike. In our experience, however, citizen science is sometimes used as a catchall term for activities that involve scientific and democratic innovation, resource efficiency in scientific processes, outreach, and education. We fear that this use of the term citizen science risks undermining the recognition of citizen science in academia as well as among citizen scientists and the general public in the longer term. Informed by these concerns, we report on a transdisciplinary attempt to establish quality criteria to decide in a transparent manner which citizen science projects are listed on Österreich forscht, an Austrian citizen science platform that is based on an established network of citizen scientists, academic researchers, funding institutions, and research institutions. We present 20 quality criteria and their relationship to existing literature, and describe the process by which they were formulated over a one-year period: a series of transdisciplinary exchanges, concerning what shape citizen science should take in the particular context of Austria, and the potential implications of certain quality criteria for individual disciplines and practitioners. While we realize that any demarcation process is bound to produce exclusionary effects, we argue that the bottom-up, transdisciplinary nature of our working group was a necessary step for Österreich forscht to strengthen its identity and purpose.
This presentation describes the work done in the frame of the CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) project from January 2020 until June 2021. The presentation was done by CoAct Partners during Project Review number one, in an online meeting attended by the Project Officer and the Project Reviewer (June, 15th 2021). DISCLAIMER: The information and views set out in this presentation are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
We are in a time of rapid change on multiple levels. Change can be seen as positive by one group and negative by another. As a result, different perspectives on any given change can draw completely different conclusions. In these proceedings we want to address different approaches to change from all kinds of perspectives within the realm of citizen science and participatory research. We discuss both active, transformative change, and the observation of change monitored by citizen science in all kinds of disciplines. We highlight the potential of citizen science to be a change maker in research and society, and as a tool to manage the change happening around us. The proceedings "Change - The transformative power of citizen science" showcase a selection of topics that have been presented and discussed at the ECSA/ACSC 2024 double conference in Vienna and highlight the transformative power, citizen science can have.
DISCLAIMER: The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. CoAct proposes a new approach to face social global concerns with Research and Innovation Actions (R&I Actions) related to mental health care, youth employment, environmental justice and gender equality by engaging citizens as co-researchers. Our approach represents a new understanding of Citizen Social Science (CSS), understood here as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern. The overall objective of CoAct is to develop and demonstrate the scientific relevance and social impact of CSS, which is to date an underexplored area of Citizen Science (CS). This document constitutes Deliverable 2.1 'Report on State of the Art of Citizen Social Science' of Work Package 2 (WP2), which is dedicated to the CSS foundations. It provides a starting point towards a common framework and a common arena to better elaborate the various characteristics of CSS. CoAct wants to contribute to the debate by catalysing the discussion and enlarging the CSS community. This effort is unprecedented in the CS and the Social Science worlds and it is expected to later result into new open materials (for citizens, policy makers, NGOs and academics) and new transdisciplinary methodologies to widen the impact of CS. This report discusses CSS as a component of CS, with its main characteristics that citizens act as co-researchers conducting research on social issues with the aim of achieving transformative and sustainable impact with the research. CSS is however emerging from at three streams: from the broader spectrum of a CS community; from a participatory research background in the social sciences and humanities and moreover directly from Citizen ...
DISCLAIMER: The present Project Deliverable has been submitted to the European Commission for review. The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. CoAct proposes a new approach to face social global concerns with Research and Innovation Actions (R&I Actions) related to mental health care, youth employment, environmental justice and gender equality by engaging citizens as co-researchers. Our approach represents a new understanding of Citizen Social Science (CSS), understood here as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern. The overall objective of CoAct is to develop and demonstrate the scientific relevance and social impact of CSS, which is to date an underexplored area of Citizen Science (CS). This document constitutes Deliverable 2.1 'Report on State of the Art of Citizen Social Science' of Work Package 2 (WP2), which is dedicated to the CSS foundations. It provides a starting point towards a common framework and a common arena to better elaborate the various characteristics of CSS. CoAct wants to contribute to the debate by catalysing the discussion and enlarging the CSS community. This effort is unprecedented in the CS and the Social Science worlds and it is expected to later result into new open materials (for citizens, policy makers, NGOs and academics) and new transdisciplinary methodologies to widen the impact of CS. This report discusses CSS as a component of CS, with its main characteristics that citizens act as co-researchers conducting research on social issues with the aim of achieving transformative and sustainable impact with the research. CSS is however emerging from at three streams: from the broader spectrum of a CS community; from a participatory ...
This presentation describes the work done in the frame of the CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) project from January 2020 until June 2021. The presentation was done by CoAct Partners during Project Review number one, in an online meeting attended by the Project Officer and the Project Reviewer (June, 15th 2021). DISCLAIMER: The information and views set out in this presentation are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The capacity-building project "EU-Citizen.Science" started in January 2019 as a consortium of 23 organisations, representing 14 European Member States and a variety of partners ranging from universities to non-governmental organizations, local authorities, civil society organisations, small to medium-sized enterprises, and natural history museums. With the EU-Citizen.Science platform, we aim to develop a mutual learning space where different tools, best practice examples and relevant scientific outcomes are collected, curated, and made accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens and media to scientific institutions, politicians and donor organisations. The project is supported by the European Commission funding-framework Horizon 2020.
