SMART-ER
The project was funded as one of the Citizen Science pilots under the Horizon project SMART-ER. It was the result of CLUSTER 3 on Empowerment, Inclusiveness, and Equality preparing for trans-national Citizen Science Pilots. Pilots were reviewed for general criteria related to scientific excellence, social impact and quality of implementation and specific elements will be taken in consideration such as:
• The relevance of the Citizen Science dimension.
• The response to regional and global challenges from the proposed pilots.
• The comprehensive development through the Pilot of a joint trans-national narrative, beyond a mere aggregation of regionally independent actions.
• The sound involvement of the 4-helix actors in the projects
• The analysis of the gender and equal opportunities dimension.
Co-creating pilots in Citizen Science
The Citizen Science pilot "Establishing a Community on Empowering, Inclusive, and Equitable Citizen Science within ECIU” (ECIE) received its funding under the EU project SMART-ER. SMART-ER – funded by EU Horizon program “Science with and for Society” (SwafS) - aims to realise a research institute for smart European regions between all 12 ECIU University member institutions to jointly address complex societal challenges under the framework of the UN SDG11 (Sustainable cities and communities). SMART-ER explores a new model of research and innovation based on a virtual collaborative environment as it will call researchers of the member universities for joint research initiatives and project activities. As part of SMART-ER, Citizen Science pilots were initiated between the universities to establish communities between researchers and learn from doing Citizen Science together.
Establishing a Community on Empowering, Inclusive, and Equitable Citizen Science within ECIU (ECIE) is one of the three pilots that were prepared during a SMART-ER co-creation process led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. This co-creation process ran from 3rd February 2022 to 18th March 2022 ticking multiple milestones along the way, from an initial 2-page idea by a loose cluster of interested researchers that were brought together during the initial workshop in February to the delivery of a 10-page pilot plan with a fully committed consortium in a few weeks.
ECIE was rewarded as CS pilot in May 2022. The pilot kicked off on July 1, 2022 and finished on September 30, 2023.
Inclusive Citizen Science
With ECIE, we wanted to promote the empowerment and inclusion of citizens, especially those from minority groups (e.g., migrants, elderly), so that they can have equitable participation in CS initiatives. ECIE aimed to advance the development of citizen science initiatives in and among ECIU universities by focusing on the empowerment, inclusion, and equality of citizens' contributions to science. To do this, we aimed to establish a Community of Practice on citizen social science within the ECIU network. The main research question we addressed was: “how can we ensure the empowering, inclusive and equitable participation of citizens in citizen science within the ECIU network?” as we argue that there is a gap in the literature to which we contribute to - how to make CS more inclusive.
ECIE promised to deliver:
- generate a review of the current CS initiatives at the six members
- deliver a Framework for Empowering, Inclusive, and Equitable CS to be applied within the ECIU network and
- come up with a strategy for the Community on Empowering, Inclusive, and Equitable Citizen Science to be applied within the ECIU.
Outcomes of the project
The project outcomes are the following:
- ECIE joined the ECIU 25th year anniversary in December 2022
- ECIE joined the ECIU Research conference in October 2023 (ECIU conference_ECIE poster.pdf)
- We made an infographic covering our approach and findings (ECIE_Framework.pdf)
- Launch an open invitation to join our Linked-In group (Linked In group invitation)
Follow ups are foreseen in our new project “Empowering higher education through citizen science and innovative future-oriented learning strategies” and a research paper that has recently been submitted.
