Last week I participated in an online course on "The role of citizen science in Horizon Europe. Designing and thinking of citizen science projects", organized by APRE.
Citizen Science spans a range of levels of engagement: from being better informed about science, to participating in the scientific process itself by observing, gathering or processing data.
Within the next European research framework program, the role of Citizen Science will be crucial in aligning the research and innovation process with the needs and expectations of society. Making citizens active in the European proposals will stimulate the creativity and quality of the project, while improving collective skills, transparency, society's trust in research and / or more simply the quantity and quality of the data collected. Actively involving citizens in all phases of scientific research is not simple, and in general Citizen Science is a phenomenon that still needs to be well understood.
For those of you who would like to find out more about Citizen Science, please here you have accesso to an excellent open book "Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy".
