Projects

Citizen Science for the SDGs  |  Global Mosquito Alert Consortium  |  Citizen Science & Open Science  |  CODATA SDG Indicators Translation

The Citizen Science Global Partnership is currently involved on two major initiatives: Citizen Science for the SDGs and the Global Mosquito Alert consortium.

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CS practitioners globally are exploring how to contribute to the SDGs and how to best demonstrate that contribution in the data we create. We are coming together across the CS community and across the world with a common goal: the contribution CS can make to the SDG monitoring and implementation to be recognized by all relevant custodian agencies and national statistical offices, policy makers and civil society.

An SDG and CS Maximization group was established in 2018 to coordinate such activities and to develop understanding about how best the citizen science community can contribute to the SDGs. The group has short term and long term objectives:

Short term

• Identify where and how CS can add value to the SDGs and help practitioners engage a the local to global scales.  
• Raise the profile of the CS methodology at national and international levels, including advocacy at high level.

Medium-long term:

• Build momentum in the community  and facilitate networks and partnerships.
• Support organisations that want to contribute and/or benefit from engagement with the UN 2030 Agenda
• Support CS projects and platforms that want to contribute to the SDGs
• Facilitate interoperability of projects and analysis
• Make sure that Goal 17 ”Leave no-one behind” principles of the UN Agenda 2030” are built into CS projects
• Provide tools, procedures, guidelines, data and metadata schema for CS to facilitate engagement with the SDGs.

The group has identified the following priority work areas: Data, Water, Advocacy and collaboration with Citizen Observatories (COs) in SDG monitoring and implementation. If you are interested in joining us follow the link : SDG/CS Max group registration

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• The Wilson Center's Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP, co-host)
• The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, co-host) 
• The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA, co-host)
• The Globe Observer Mosquito Health Mapper
• The Invasive Mosquito Project
• Muggenradar
• Mosquito Alert
• ZanzaMapp.
• MosquitoWEB
• CitizenScience.Asia

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Now in the context of pressing planetary challenges, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has identified the need to encourage science to be more connected to societal needs and as an enabler of equal opportunities to allow everyone to participate and benefit from what Open Science can offer. UNESCO launched a global consultation on Open Science to support the development of a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Sciencewhich shall be adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in 2021.

The global Citizen Science community has been invited to contribute to this process and its first contribution is a short paper on ‘Global Citizen Science perspectives on Open Science’ where the views of 63 citizen science practitioners from 24 countries were synthesised into the paper responding to UNESCO’s key themes. This paper can be found  here. This was an important step to ensure that the global Citizen Science community could seize the opportunity to feed into the formal UNESCO process for developing a global policy and regulatory agenda on Open Science.

The Citizen Science and Open Science Community of Practice has been established under the umbrella of the GCSP, which will allow it access to learn from all the networks of Citizen Science communities across the world to enrich the UNESCO consultation process for the Recommendation. The UNESCO Recommendation will define “shared values and principles for Open Science, and point to concrete measures on Open Access and Open Data with proposals for action to bring citizens closer to science, and commitments for a better distribution and production of science in the world”. Such recommendations are legal instruments with the aim to influence national laws and practices which the UNESCO member states will be asked to report against.

There is now significant expertise within both the Open Science and Citizen Science movements and this is an opportune time to consider together how to maximise the opportunities of collaboration to make further advances together. In order to “bring citizens closer to science”, the work that the Citizen Science movement is doing to “leave no one behind” and develop co-creative processes which engage communities in research and learning which is relevant to their concerns, is fundamental and can make a significant contribution to the aims of Open Science and UNESCO.

Initial Terms of Reference of the CS & OS CoP

WHY
The participation of the CS & OS CoP is a major opportunity for influencing the uptake of Citizen Science by providing a reflection of evolved Citizen Science practitioner views and positions from as broad a spectrum as possible and from across the globe.

As UNESCO is seeking a long term collaboration with the Citizen Science community, the CS & OS CoP within the GCSP uses the opportunity to anchor and shape the understanding, role and value of Citizen Science in the framework of UNESCO science policy. 

The structure for this "Community of Practice" is modeled after the WeObserve project, which defines the role of a CoP as consolidating practice-based expertise of citizen science, sharing information and resources, and working to further develop best practice guidelines and toolkits for citizen science.

Medium-term goals of the CS & OS CoP (per June 1, 2020):

• Continue to support engagement between UNESCO and the global Citizen Science community throughout the consultation process, including thorough an “online virtual discussion on open science in the context of our regional and thematic consultations” beginning in June 2020.
• Better understand and facilitate opportunities for collaboration between Citizen Science and Open Science communities at the global level. 

WHO
The CS & OS CoP brings together citizen science and open science practitioners interested in supporting continuous engagement between UNESCO and global citizen science communities throughout the consultation process and who want to better understand and facilitate opportunities for collaboration between citizen science and open science communities at the global level.

WHAT
The activities of the CS & OS CoP shall initially be modeled closely to the process of developing the UNESCO Recommendation, which is a process of about two years calling for input from experts on different topic areas at various points in time.

Moreover, we aspire to make one of the early activities of this CoP the ‘refining’ the short paper that was submitted to UNESCO into a peer-reviewed publication, via a collaborative process among CoP members.

HOW
We have already received UNESCO’s approval to proceed with our approach of managing input to the UNESCO process through a dedicated GCSP CoP, with the aim of collecting and synthesizing diverse citizen science perspectives as input to the UNESCO Recommendation. UNESCO has approved Uta Wehn as the primary contact, willing to be accountable for working with members of the GCSP CS & OS CoP to provide input to the UNESCO Advisory Committee for the Recommendation on Open Science. Together, Uta Wehn, Claudia Göbel and Libby Hepburn are acting as interim co-Chairs of the GCSP CS & OS CoP to bring this work forward

Our next steps are:

• Circulate the invitation as widely as possible to join the CS & OS CoP as an observer or as a contributor;
• Promote the ‘Global Citizen Science perspectives on Open Science’ short paper via the GCSP website and through the global citizen science associations’ networks;
• Hold two initial online workshops in July (different time zones) to co-create the objectives, ways of working and the action plan of the CS & OS CoP (based on the successful We Observe approach for co-creating CoPs); and,
• Make decisions on ‘refining’ the short paper that was submitted to UNESCO into a peer-reviewed publication, via a collaborative process among CoP members.

 
JOIN THE CS & OS COP!
Are you a Citizen Science and/or Open Science practitioner and enthusiast? Then you are warmly invited to join this CS & OS CoP! You can join as an observer or as a contributor.

It is important that you formally sign up via this form, in order for us to comply with privacy regulation and to make sure you are included in all relevant communication and activities.

We hope that you will join this exciting opportunity and help shape this CoP to the needs of its members!

Any questions and for further comments, please contact Uta Wehn.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON OPEN SCIENCE AND CITIZEN SCIENCE (side-event from the ECSA 2020 Conference)
This event was to share the background to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and how the global citizen science community has responded to their request for input into this process and the establishment and work of the Citizen Science and Open Science Community of Practice.
Here is the link to the recording of the session, our contributors and the timings of their presentations and Q&A, also relevant comments from the Chat.
We would like to thank ECSA for the opportunity to share our work and the ECSA team for all their technical help and support. If you have any questions or would like to join the CoP, please contact us.

Message from UNESCO
This message to the CS&OS CoP has been received from Ana Persic Head of Section at UNESCO:
"We are happy to inform you that a milestone has been reached in our process with the first draft text being sent to the UNESCO Member States last week https://en.unesco.org/news/milestone-unescos-development-global-recommendation-open-science We hope to have captured the key messages from the citizen science community and will be open for further comments and suggestions for improvements. A more official message will be sent to you in this regard in the next few days with more information on how to engage with the next steps of the process. With many thanks for your precious collaboration”.

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