Citizen Science project in the social sciences and humanities is launched
COESO is funded by the European Commission and supported by OPERAS infrastructure
An international Citizen Science project funded by the European Commission and supported by the OPERAS infrastructure, with a focus on social issues, was officially launched at the end of January. The COESO - Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues - will be a three-year participatory research project and will serve as a meeting point between several European communities: the social sciences and humanities community, the citizen science community and the open scholarly communication community.
The project will contribute to overcome obstacles that hinder the development of citizen science in the social sciences and humanities and to facilitate and support participatory research. The COESO team will develop a Virtual Ecosystem for Research Activation (VERA). This ecosystem will be a collaborative space for the production and sharing of knowledge, collaborating with research funding organizations to improve financial support for citizen science.
The project will benefit from the experience of existing communities, such as Hypotheses.org and EU-Citizen.Science, and explore the frontiers of public engagement in innovation in the social sciences and humanities, through mutual learning and transmedia writing. To measure the quality of collaboration between researchers and citizens, COESO will design cooperation analytics.
Pilots
The project launches on a basis of ten citizen science pilots, representing a variety of social sciences and arts disciplines, societal challenges and types of engagement with citizens in different European countries. They address specific societal issues: mass tourism, education and gender, resilient societies, fight against crime, societal change and migrations. Five pilots have already been integrated into COESO: pilot 1 deals with mass tourism and urban transformations; the second brings a collaboration between dance and philosophy; the third pilot deals with social evolutions through the reuse of confiscated properties from the Italian mafia; pilot 4 deals with accessibility and appropriability of tools and databases for journalists; and the fifth pilot works on knowledge and perspectives on immigration from German-speaking regions. More details about each of them can be read on the OPERAS blog.
Kick-off
The project was officially started in an online meeting that brought together the 15 members, from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Participants presented the work to be done for each of the seven Work Packages.
A renewed focus on open science that goes beyond publications and data, including aspects of co-development, co-creation, and the need to improve trust between science and society was highlighted in the meeting.
For OPERAS, the dimension of citizen science is a realm where its community can bring knowledge about the social sciences and humanities, their needs, and about the services needed in these disciplines.
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Read more details about the launch of the COESO project.