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Citizen science is a rapidly emerging mode of research and innovation, and one which the projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Green Deal call are increasingly using to engage citizens in adapting to and tackling climate change. In this series of articles, we will be focusing on some of the key themes to emerge from the Green Deal Projects Support Office’s recent webinar on citizen science[1], such as its role of citizen science in realising the European Green Deal, the challenges presented by employing citizen science methods, and how we go about capturing the long-term impact and validation of results. Next, we explore the challenges and barriers to implementing citizen science projects.
Maintaining Citizen Engagement
At the inception of any citizen engagement programme, there are two key considerations. Firstly, how do you increase the number of people willing to participate and then, which strategies can you employ to maintain that participation? Barriers that may prevent engagement must be identified in advance, including language, financial issues, gender issues, and inclusivity for ethnic minorities, for example. It is important to understand the local context of the citizens and devise targeted measures for engagement.
The role that citizens will play in the project must be defined at the start and they should understand in which part of the research process they will be involved. This facilitates the shift away from top-down, hierarchal approaches and allows citizens to lead from the bottom up.
Motivation mechanisms are key to not only maintaining participation, but increasing productivity as well. A few methods that can be used include frequent feedback, sharing relevant knowledge, entertainment, access to information, and gamification.
Some strategies to maintain engagement include:
Making it fun! Creating a social element whilst participating in projects and having an appealing reward system.
Citizens appreciate working closely with scientists, whether this be through formal training or working alongside them during a project.
Active participation in data analysis and validation. Citizens value being involved in crucial elements of the research process.
Building trust and maintaining the purpose and motivation for their involvement. This could be achieved through fostering a community feeling around the project, networking, and creating a personal connection with local actors, context, or cause.
There are a number of key questions to consider when dealing with the question of how to engage and maintain the interest of citizen scientists. These include:
Which citizen communities are you targeting?
What are the motivations for citizens to participate in the project?
How can we keep their participation active?
Are rewarding mechanisms needed? How ethical are they in each case?
What do the citizens get from the project?
How to ensure gender balance? How to overcome language barriers?
How can I make sure that the project is trying to solve a direct problem that communities may have?
How can I connect with existing communities, local events, or places where citizens gather (e.g. schools, libraries, neighbourhood associations…)?
Do citizens participating in citizen science projects have internal biases?
Data Quality
The nature of citizen-led science means that data collected is likely to be dispersed, meaning it is difficult to access and re-use, which poses as a challenge for data quality itself. With automatic validation mechanisms remaining costly, data sharing between projects being difficult and a data-centric approach not having been systematically adopted – which complicates the ability of researchers to assess, measure and compare results and impact – ensuring the robustness of the data collected remains a hurdle if not considered early on.
Some of the approaches to mitigate these challenges include:
Check for pre-existing tools that can be of use. Platforms (or webtools/mobile apps) that help to centralise the data collected can be especially useful.
Connect with similar projects to share knowledge and approaches. Likewise, a community of participants or practitioners can help to validate the data as well.
Offering training workshops to maintain consistency in data quality
Comparing with official data. Consider the potential combination of official data with the project’s own data, visualisation, and interpretations, so it can also be replicated in other contexts.
Questions to consider around ensuring robust data quality include:
Which methods and tools does a citizen science project use for data collection? Have they been specifically developed for the project?
How does the project ensure the quality of data? How does the project validate it?
Do participants receive any training to guarantee the quality of the data collected?
Is the data produced open?
Is the data produced FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and/or Reusable)?
Is the data produced to be connected to any existing data repositories?
Is the data collected meant to be used officially by environmental or other public authorities?
Demonstrating Impact
It is often difficult to devise indicators that are useful to the project in measuring the impacts of citizen science, and that are also applicable to the relevant scale (local, national, regional or European level). However, by publishing the final results of your project and justifying the evaluation metrics used, you can not only contribute to the discourse and overall recognition of citizen science as a research methodology but also create an academic impact in and of itself.
A few strategies to improve impact evaluation include:
Prioritising the impact areas and creating a strategy that aligns with existing policy and social agendas.
Engagement with policymakers. Producing policy documents resulting from the project to inform existing agendas and planning political advocacy/ communities.
Flexibility. Running ex-ante and ex-post impact assessments to monitor a project’s progress
Key questions to consider include:
How can the areas of impact be selected according to the project’s nature? (Scientific, Social, Economic, Environmental, Political Impacts)
Can the project have more than one impact dimension?
In which phase of the project are you doing the evaluation ?
How can the project measure its political impact?
How can social innovation be measured?
Sustainability
Near the end of the project, resources are typically depleted and there is little attention paid to the sustainability of the project. Technological tools (e.g. apps or platforms), for example, that help to retain engagement and raise awareness, are costly and therefore their maintenance is often overlooked. Furthermore, the upscaling and replicability of projects are compromised due to limited funding and the short-term perspective that govern projects.
To better ensure project sustainability, the following should be considered:
Defining the long-term plan and new business models at the beginning of the project.
Finding additional resources (either public or private) beyond grant fundings.
Planning the scale-up or spread the activities, outcomes and impacts of the project.
Key questions to consider include:
Is there any type of recognition for doing citizen science at a professional level?
Do citizens receive any type of recognition for their participation?
Is the data produced integrated into any official database?
Were policymakers engaged in the project? At which governance level?
Is there an exploitation plan for the project?
Is the project replicable at a different scale or different geography?
Is the project methodology replicable?
Have you planned the legacy of the project at the design phase?
Academic Scientists and Scientific Recognition
Finally, there are institutional changes required in academia to increase the scientific recognition of citizen science. There are significant efforts to pursue this, such as the European Commission including citizen science in its Open Science Agenda.
Academics often lack the familiarity and skills required for implementing citizen science projects, which requires them to undergo training. However, there are limited incentives for them to do so as there is a reluctance for them to enrol in a more complex and less controlled research scheme; coupled with the lack of scientific and academic career recognition for participation in such projects.
To tackle this, possible strategies include:
Establishing an interdisciplinary team. Citizen Science has a European platform to connect scientists around Europe: shared information, paper publications possibilities, new funding schemes, networking.
Emphasising the policy impact and research elements to the project to incentivise academic participation. Similarly, reiterating how Citizen Science enhances societal trust in science.
Evidently, citizen science faces many challenges to its implementation. However, they can all be easily mitigated with advanced planning. In the final article, we will explore the long-term impacts of a citizen science approach to research and innovation. You can watch the recording of our citizen science webinar and download the presentations on the Green Deal Projects Support Office website.
[1] [1] Acknowledgement: Thanks to our webinar speakers and participants, who provided the content for the basis of these articles: Alan Irwin, Professor at Copenhagen Business School; Gabriella Leo, Policy Officer, DG RTD Unit 4; Rosa Arias, Science for Change; Margaret Gold, Citizen Science Lab Leiden University; Alessandro Caforio, GreenSCENT project; Arlind Xhelili, PSLifestyle project; and Luis Narvarte, AURORA project.