National project · Citizen science research
Impactos CC
Understanding the impacts of citizen science to strengthen it
About the project
Knowing the impacts of an activity – that is, the changes and consequences that follow from it – is essential to consolidate good practice and to learn from results or processes that did not work.
ImpactosCC is a national project that aims to understand the different impacts of citizen science projects carried out in Spain.
In Spain we have been working on this since at least 2016 through the Observatory of Citizen Science in Spain, a collaborative project launched by Fundación Ibercivis and co-funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). Long before that, a wide range of social actors had been working together to consolidate citizen science in and from Spain. Over these years we have noticed that we are sometimes not fully aware of the significant impacts of our work.
That is why we are launching ‘ImpactosCC: understanding the impacts of citizen science to strengthen it’, a one-year project co-funded by FECYT and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Project objectives
ImpactosCC has a twofold aim: on the one hand, to help each project understand its impacts; on the other, to build a broad and as detailed as possible picture of the impacts of citizen science in Spain and its regions. This will be useful both for the people, communities and organisations working in citizen science and for all the people, communities and organisations affected by its impacts. We will analyse the following impacts:
(1) Scientific and technological.
(2) Environmental.
(3) Sociocultural, equality and equity.
(4) Economic, political and governance. The project is based on the conviction that every perspective is needed.
Our activities
Impactos CC will officially start on 1 December 2023 and end on 30 November 2024. We already have a good deal of useful information – gathered collaboratively over the years at many meetings and workshops, and shared through the Observatory – as well as tools developed by the European and international citizen science community, and ongoing collaborations with different institutions and communities. The main tasks are: (1) reviewing the state of the art and building the community (decentralised but harmonised); (2) gathering information according to agreed criteria; (3) analysing the information and sharing the results at local, regional, national and international level.
The role of Ibercivis
Although Ibercivis will coordinate the tasks where needed, we want the project – and its resources – to belong to everyone who wants to, or can, benefit and contribute. We aim to make the most of all the efforts made by and among all of us, and those still to come, strengthening one another and building cooperation networks: in short, achieving a citizen science that is ever more open, inclusive and sustainable.
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Project details
Type of project
National
Duration
01/12/2023-31/11/2024
Area
Citizen science research
