ECSA 2016: Open Science – Policy Innovation & Social Impact (Day 1 morning)

wp-1463648689152.jpg[I’m publishing it full of typos closer to live blogging – come back in a day to see a nice version:)

The 19th May 2016 was a special day for the European Citizen Science Association, with the opening of the first conference of the organisation, focusing on the links between citizen science and open science. 

Aletta Bonn (Helmholtz Association | German Center for integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) – GEWISS). welcomed everyone to the conference, exploring the balances between technology, inclusion. We have 350 people that came from different projects to discuss citizen science, and there is already a working document that aim to support citizen science. In 2013, the coalition agreement declared ‘we want to develop new forms of citizen participation and the communication of science’ – the ministry of science this week talk about science for all. We have three full days. The first day dedicated to policy impact and social impact – we will have different ways to work togehter. The second day is about sicnetific innovation – we have almost 100 posters for people to talk to people, the third day is open to the maker community in Berlin – celebrating success in many project. We have an unconference programme in the thinkcamp. We have the citizen science disco on the second night, and a citizen science festival – linking to the Barcelona last year. We had a big conference committee and many people where happy to help. The people who run the effort of Susanna and Ogarit on making the event hapenning. The communication. We will also have the new citizen science journal and also a joint book is in the planning.

ECSA Katrin Vohland Museum of Natural History Berlin – GEWISS, Vice-chair ECSA. Ciizen science is now a global movement. Institutionalisation is a signal – with ECSA, CSA and also network in China, New Zealand, and other places. There is also coming together on identity in the pcinciples of citizen science. Citizen science should be part of identitiy of democratisation, European culture of joint effort. Citizen science also go through professionalisation – we exchange not only experience, but we also think of social and poitical impact. Citizen science have an impact o- citizen science gains discoursice power in the scientific ad political arna. While we are getting over the issue of trusting data, other issues emerge – there is no tradeoff between freedom of academic research and citizen science. We can see links to policy, and to responsible research and innovation. ECSA members jointly developed a strategy : promoting sustainability, developig a thinktank for citizen science, and developed methodology. We want to see marginalised groups joining in participatory science. Citizen science can also help migrants to join citizen science. There are now H2020 projects – among them DITOs which links the dots in citizen science.

Roger Owen Head of Ecology, Scottish Environment Protection Agency. For an environmental protection agencies – the regulate, but also establishing partnerships, raising environmenta l awareness, and also in building up the evidence based – this is important to other people who act on the environment. This is als an opportunity to assess the success of policies. For EPAs, public engagement helps in raising awareness, engagement, getting data. In the range of tools that are avaialbe to EPAs, there can be expert assessment that is very expensive – and citizzen science is cost effective. Activities in Scotland – in meteorological observations, 650 anglers that do ecological assessment of streams, developing apps, and they commissioned a guide for the best use of citizen science for EPAs, There is now a network through the EEA to engage in citizen science activites: well design cit sci passist policy formation, provide monitoring data and evidence; serve as early warning, harness volutneer thinking, work across scals and more. EPAs can provde data and infrastructure, access to technology (e.g. apps), provide best practice guidelines, help with funding. The EPA network want to understand the success criteria and lessons from initatives. The want ot understand motivations and incentives. They want also joint and complementary ECSA/EPA network activites across Europe.

Citizen science – Connecting to the Open Science Agenda Jose-Miguel Rubio Policy Officer at the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. on behalf of John Magen. Provide the policy context for open science. One of the major drivers for open science is the digital single market (andrus Ansip, Gunter Oettinger, Moedas). The research and innovation team of the EU is central: Moedas stated: help us ensure citizen scientists contribute to Eurpean Science as valid knowledge producers by 2020′ during the open science conference in April 2016. By open science, we meetthe transformation and opening up of the scientific process, through collaborative work that is facilitated by innovative information and communication technologies. We see shift from only publications, to sharing knowedge through the web: it makes it more efficient, transparents and collaboraative. The benefits that are expected – good for science (efficient, varified, transparent), economy (access and reuse of scientific knowledge by industry, and good for society (broader, faster, transparent, and equal access to it). The open science evolved from public consultation that started 2 years ago – on science 2.0. Policy recommendations include the need to support citizen science platforms, and support its development. 5 broad policy actions which include citizen science in them – creating incentives, removing barriers, promoting open access, developing open science cloud, and embedding open science in society. Citiznen science is appearing in the top level ambitions. Citizen science is embedded in specific approaches by research funding, making it linked to society. There are several activities that relate to ctiizen sciecne and public engagement. Seeing citizens are many roles: scientis , consumer, decision maker, user of data. In H2020, which is much of the biggest funding programme for science in the world, including citizen science – through open access. Examples for the activites are the collective awareness platforms for social innovation and sustainability (CAPS programme) including bottom up activities. There is also reports about citizen science – the white paper of socientize, and the UWE on environmental citizen science, there are the Citizens’ Observatories projects including 5 FP7 projects, and 4 new projects that start next year – LandSense, GROW, GroundTruth2.0 and Scent (ECSA is member in one). The MyGEOSS competition is another area of activity

wp-1463648689152.jpgPanel discussions facilitated by: Jan-Martin Wiarda Germany who got interested in the area as a journalist. the different panel members explore Citizen Science – Demonstrating Success

Josep Perelló OpenSystems, Spain: open systems propose opening up research, complex systems research that are about society, but do experiments in public space and in collaborations with people from across the public. They also have a citizen science office in Barcelona with 20 groups and support from the city council. There is a flickr albom of open systems, and they do experiments in the street – asking people to understand how we cooperate – we are opens to allow designer and artists to work together in a city square. They have done reforestationas the social impact following the proejct to pay back. This was successful – it need to have scientific impact, in high impact journal (inc nature communication), they want to see 3 actors – scientists, artists and public authorities for example, and also want to demosntrate positive social impact

Arnold van Vliet Natuurkalender Netherlands – the project on which Arnold involved in is about phenology network, and it involves thoursand of volunteers, with a long term changes – they can show tick bites and the link to lime desease. They reach out through media and get to 250 million times, which is alot – being media academic help to increase public awareness.

Daniel Dörler citizenscience.at, Austria. in 2012 Florian and Daniel started doing citizen science in Austria, like SciStarter. They found 30 different projects from all sort of institutions – some by citizens, some by NGOs, universities. The main goal is to connect citizen science actors in Austria to help them collaborate. The platform is independent , and the system is more then a hobby, and along side a pHD but support to the project can be an issue. What is making citizen science successful – the quality fo a project need to be high – scientific results, data but also how they give back to citizens. Citizens contribute for fun, but it need to give back more than just fun

Doreen Walther Mosquito Atlas, Germany. The Mukkenatlas – the project focus on human health and it point to Mosquito borne diseases across Europe. Germany was assumed that no malaria will happen after WW II. there was no attention for a long time, but with invasive speacies, there was a need to notice them and endemic species. They realised that people want to learn more about mosquito biology and life. Doreen is interested in the life of mosquito and their development. They are doing molecular analysis. Ask people to collect mosquitos, kill them and share them with the scientists. Over 30,000 samples arriving in ayear

Louise Francis Mapping for change, UK. Started with projects about noise issues, but then turned into air quality issues with response from local authority to monitor locally. We’ve worked with over 30 communities, using simple methods that can be used even by children in schools, working together with local authorities, there are cases of changes in busses from transport providers. Success is when there is an active change in the area. Engaging people is challenging to scale up – by making the data opened and shared, we are providing the tools to let communities to the work by themselves. Can be overwhelming demands when communities want to join. There are different approaches =- when people live in a certain area and concerned about development project. Purchasing diffusion tubes for community can be €8 for one diffusion tube, and then buy them themselves. The people decide by themselves where they want to work.

Need to use different netowrks, and need to show that the content is valuable, information need to berelevant to people – to get ideas of mosquitos and collecting information from licence plates was possible in the Neathrlands with 600 people but not huge scale. Josep pointed that you need to adapt to the specific situation and it’s not only about autonomy – it’s more like guerilla than an army with regular structure. Martin – there are tensions between top-down and bottom-up. Louise – we set up a seperate social enterprise for flexibility and responsiveness, but the issue is autonomous from what – there is sometime lack of trust by the local governemnt, so sometime the link to university is useful to increase trust. There is value in a third party between local gov and communities. Doreen – they deal with insect of medical importance, and media is getting invovled, and creating panic is actually useful, but people have question marks in their heads and contact experts, which they offer and give an answer. This also encourage people to participate. MArtin – relevance is coming again many time. Scientists don’t decide what is relevant. Arnold – scientists can have an important question to ask people to help, the other way around is also useful – both directions are useful and can work. If the scientist can’t communicate with the public than it won’t work. Josep – working with local authorities does require asking them what is relevant to them to address as that helps in participation.

Regarding open data policies – Daniel: encouraging projects to move towards this to encourage partner projects. The platform is trying to faciliatae engagement but not to force policies. in terms of relevance, it is hard to judge whaat are the success factors – for example a project about wild life in the city. Louise – in terms of mobile app, our conclusion was to keep very simple approach of using diffusion tubes, so it’s very simple way to record data collection process, and then record the results from the lab – so facilitating simple sensing.

Doreen – regarding how many people engage: the use of media TV, radio and newspaper help people to engage, but also internet platform and word of mouth. People have events – BBQ to attract and collect mosquito.

Are there examples of people that turned into professionals scientists but we did work with people that we seen change to move to further education – participants can be empower people in what they want to do. Josep – with the impact in school. Arnold – The population of participaatns – up to 60% of participants have higher education and therefore are scientists. Most people are already educated.

Audience poll – about 15% work on citizen science full time, 60% part time, and 15% as a hobby – but with overlaps .

Unsuccessful project can be things like for Josep, when urban bee hive remain illegal. For Doreen, the costs and complexity and loss of time can lead to failed projects. Louise  – questions of data and data validity – volunteer work hard to collect data and then ist is questioned and requestioned, and sometime that the research team ask us to collect a lot of data collection, and there are issues of thinking about the motivations of participation.

The afternoon session started with The diversity of citizen-science technologies: traditional and new opportunities for interactive participation in scientific research

Chair/Organiser: Franz Hölker IGB Berlin, Germany

Co-chairs: Luigi Ceccaroni 10001 labs, Spain & Jaume Piera Institut de Ciències del Mar, Spain

Jaume Piera Institut de Ciències del Mar, Spain

Robert Arlinghaus Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Germany

Neil Bailey Earthwatch, UK