The event brought together around 500 people from 35 countries, a few days after the EOSC Federation officially went into production.

Citizen science produces data, methods and services that matter to European research, but digital research infrastructures have been built with universities and research centres in mind. People who take part in a project without belonging to an academic institution find it hard to access them. That is what we went to Florence to talk about.

What EOSC is

EOSC, the European Open Science Cloud, is not a single cloud or one large data centre. It is a federation of nodes, run by institutions and communities, that share data, tools and scientific services under common rules. Gianluigi Consoli (Italy) summed it up during the Symposium in one sentence, “EOSC does not replace our research infrastructures. It connects them.”

The EOSC Federation has just officially gone into production. There are already 14 nodes in production offering 124 scientific services, and 28 nodes are in production or on their way. The second wave of node coordinators was also presented in Florence. As we announced, the Symposium is the annual meeting of the EOSC community, and this year it took place from 14 to 16 October at the Palazzo dei Congressi.

The presentation

In the session “EOSC and ERICs/ESFRIs”, Fermín Serrano, RIECS-Concept Coordinator, gave the talk “Citizen science as an emerging RI community: participatory governance and EOSC as a long-term institutional anchor”. He prepared it with Francisco Sanz, EOSC-CSN Coordinator, who was also in Florence.

The talk applied the ESFRI and EOSC models to citizen science. We propose a pan-European, long-term, public and federated capacity that provides resources and services to all citizen science actors in all domains. In it, citizen scientists are at the same time users, providers of resources and data, and part of the governance. That is why they can bring new users, new data and new services to the EOSC Federation, and why EOSC can be a long-term institutional anchor for citizen science.

We want excellence to be possible without erasing local or domain-specific strengths, citizen science to be recognised as a strategic and horizontal capacity in the European Research Area, decisions to be supported by high-quality, trusted citizen-generated data, and existing capacities to be connected and easier to reuse and sustain.

The work so far

RIECS-Concept (Horizon Europe, grant agreement No 101188210), which we coordinate at Ibercivis, is preparing a future pan-European research infrastructure for excellent citizen science. In the first phase, up to July 2026, we gathered the needs of citizen science communities through around 50 engagement activities and published the first RIECS catalogue. In the second phase, where we are now, we are repeating the exercise with other communities, including other research infrastructures, to analyse and prioritise. The technical feasibility study and the strategic plan are due in December 2027, and the aim is to apply to the ESFRI Roadmap in 2030 with the commitment of six to eight countries.

So far we have reviewed more than 700 papers and more than 4,400 technologies, and held 51 activities with more than 500 participants from more than ten countries and regions. This work has produced 823 user stories, 37 needs, 31 technical requirements, 151 catalogue components and 1,980 services, resources and functionalities.

Alongside it, EOSC-CSN (EOSC Citizen Science Node), a six-month project funded by EOSC Gravity that we coordinate with CIEMAT, Citizen Science Italia and Leiden University, on behalf of Citizen Science Nederland, has drawn up the Project Charter for a thematic citizen science node in the EOSC Federation, covering its governance, technical architecture and operational framework. EOSC Gravity has already validated it. In the model we presented in Florence, RIECS and EOSC-CSN form an intermediate layer between users, the citizen science ecosystem, and EOSC together with the research infrastructures.

Four use cases

The talk ended with four possible use cases, which we propose to design and pilot together with other research infrastructures and EOSC nodes.

• A research team launches a citizen science project in RIECS, which provides proven methods, tools and guidance and connects the project to EOSC resources.
• An existing citizen science project wants to make its data available through EOSC. RIECS validates the metadata, assesses readiness and makes the dataset discoverable in the EOSC Federation.
• Another research infrastructure needs citizen participation. RIECS provides citizen science services such as ethics, recruitment and participation, while the infrastructure keeps responsibility for the campaign and its data.
• A person with no institutional affiliation wants to use EOSC resources. They sign in to RIECS with an external identity and recognised citizen science organisations vouch for them. RIECS manages roles, and EOSC providers make the final access decisions.

The panel

After the talks, Fermín joined the session panel with Antje Keppler (EOSC Association and Euro-BioImaging ERIC), Marcus Povey (Instruct-ERIC), Özlem Yalçın Seyhan (KUTTAM, Koç University) and Vojtěch Bystrý (CEITEC MU). The discussion covered what it takes to become an EOSC node, where to focus effort in the Federation’s second year, and how new communities can join without creating unfunded expectations.

Our view is that citizen science is well placed to contribute capabilities and governance step by step, although the operational commitments the Federation requires are hard to meet for small organisations that rely mostly on project funding. To make EOSC usable for people without an institutional affiliation, we propose a federated trust model, in which trusted organisations verify the identity and affiliation of contributors close to their community, and that verification is recognised across the Federation, in a similar way to how eduGAIN works in academia.

We also believe we should build what is missing and federate what already works, rather than add more fragmentation. Fermín often compares it with high-performance computing thirty years ago, when many groups had their own computing resources, which gradually became part of coordinated national and European infrastructures such as PRACE.

We were not the only citizen science voice at the Symposium. In the EOSC Federation User Forum (“EOSC Federation User Forum: The voice of the research community”), Stephen Serjeant of the Open University spoke about citizen science communities.

More information is available on the RIECS-Concept and EOSC-CSN websites and in the official summary of the EOSC Symposium 2026.

La entrada Bringing citizen science to the EOSC Symposium 2026 in Florence se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Ibercivis is one of the project partners and took part online in the kick-off meeting, held in Salamanca on 29 and 30 September.

OSIRIS-EU (Open Science inspiring Inclusive Research and Innovation towards Societal Impact in Europe) is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchanges project under Horizon Europe, funded by the European Union with €1,087,170 and coordinated by the University of Salamanca. Over the next four years it will work to transform the way scientific knowledge is produced, shared and assessed.

The kick-off meeting took place at the Centro Internacional del Español in Salamanca. The University of Salamanca’s Vice-Rector for Research, José Miguel Mateos Roco, and Nicoletta Petre, Project Officer at the European Research Executive Agency (REA), welcomed representatives of the 27 institutions in the consortium. Over the two days, the partners agreed a shared roadmap and launched the first staff exchanges.

From Open Science to impact

OSIRIS-EU starts from one idea: opening up science is not just about making its results easier to access, but also about doing better science, more collaborative, transparent and connected with society. Opening up data, methods and results is only the beginning. Real impact also depends on reproducibility, responsible assessment, inclusion, public participation, ethics and trust in science.

That is why staff exchanges are at the heart of the project. Researchers, technical staff and other professionals will spend time at other institutions to share practices, compare ways of doing science and bring what they learn back to their own organisations. The aim is for these exchanges to build a lasting network of cooperation across institutions, disciplines and sectors that keeps working once the project ends.

A network of 27 institutions

The consortium includes universities, research centres, scientific organisations, international infrastructures and companies working in technology, education and research assessment. Among them are the University of Edinburgh, KU Leuven, the University of Vienna, Yonsei University (South Korea), King’s College London, CERN, the Institut Pasteur, Fundación CARTIF, OAPEN, Arduino, Coursera, Altmetric and Clarivate. Ibercivis is part of this network as a partner. This variety makes it possible to connect research, technology, education, open access, research assessment, citizen science and innovation within a single network.

The role of Ibercivis

As a project partner, Ibercivis brings its experience in citizen science and participatory open science. We are part of the work package on societal engagement and citizen science, where we lead the task on citizen science pilots: we will connect researchers, policymakers and citizens so that inclusiveness, equality and co-creation reach the whole consortium.

In these pilots, members of the public will be able to co-create data, validate research results or help monitor the societal impact of the project. The whole process will be documented openly in the OSIRIS-EU Digital Hub.

You can follow the project on its website: osiriseu.com.

Adapted from the original news story by the University of Salamanca (in Spanish): ‘La USAL lidera una red internacional de instituciones para transformar la Ciencia Abierta en impacto social’.

La entrada OSIRIS-EU gets under way: the European project in which Ibercivis is a partner to turn Open Science into societal impact se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The consortium met to monitor the progress made over the 27 months of the project and to define the next steps in implementing its various demonstrations and applications.

Over the two days, the partners responsible for the different tasks of the European project ATRIUM presented their progress and shared the main challenges for the coming phases. The meeting brought together work ranging from the innovation and production of new bio-based construction materials to their adaptation to European regulations, the development of a sustainable business model, the demonstration of the materials in different contexts, and communication and dissemination activities.

Progress in the development and demonstration of the materials

The first day focused mainly on Work Packages 1, 2 and 3, which cover the innovation and development processes for ATRIUM’s construction materials, the definition of sustainable business models, and the demonstration of intermediate materials and final products at the project’s different Demo Sites.

Zaragoza is one of ATRIUM’s demonstration sites in this area, coordinated by our foundation. The Zaragoza Demo Site will explore the possibilities of the materials from an artistic and educational perspective, with the participation of professional artists, teachers and art and design students.

During the meeting, we presented the progress made so far and the main challenges identified for carrying out this phase of the project. One key aspect will be establishing an effective communication channel between the manufacturers of the materials and the end users of the Zaragoza Demo Site. So that artists, teachers and students can experiment with the materials and explore new applications in their work, manufacturers will provide accessible, specialised information on their characteristics, transformation processes and possible uses.

This exchange of knowledge will also be essential to bring ATRIUM’s objectives on sustainability, the circular economy and the use of bio-based resources into the artistic and educational sphere.

Another challenge identified is the logistics of managing the materials, particularly coordinating orders and shipments so that they fit both the manufacturers’ production schedules and the time artists and students need to experiment.

Communication, dissemination and next steps for ATRIUM

The second day focused on Work Packages 4, 5 and 6. Work Package 4 deals with adapting the bio-based products developed in ATRIUM to the European regulatory framework, a necessary step to facilitate their future use on the market.

Work Package 5 is devoted to communicating, disseminating and exploiting the project’s results. All partners take part, carrying out activities aimed at both specialist audiences and other interested groups, including training sessions, workshops, demonstration activities, and communication through the media and social networks.

Finally, Work Package 6 covers the coordination and management of the project, ensuring that the different tasks are followed up and that the partners in the consortium collaborate.

The Naples meeting thus made it possible to review the progress achieved and, above all, to align the work of the different partners for a new stage focused on the demonstration, experimentation and communication of ATRIUM’s results.

From Zaragoza, Ibercivis will continue working on its tasks for the Demo Site, connecting manufacturers, researchers, artists, teachers and students and turning it into a space for experimentation where the new bio-based materials can find applications and uses beyond construction.

La entrada Ibercivis presents in Naples how it will bring ATRIUM’s bio-based materials to art and design se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The Plan-B project, in which Ibercivis is part of the consortium, proposed an activity: placing on a map the night-time photos that astronauts take from the International Space Station, using the Lost at Night tool.

Visitors of all ages in front of the screens in the ESAC computer room.

The problem: beautiful photos that are not yet maps

Astronauts on the ISS have been photographing the Earth at night for more than twenty years. Many of these images already have an approximate location, but that is not enough to use them as scientific data. To do so, they have to be georeferenced: each photo must be aligned with its exact geographic coordinates, so that every pixel corresponds to a specific point on the planet.

That is what Lost at Night does: with the help of volunteers, it builds a global map of the Earth’s night-time lights in order to measure the impact of light pollution on ecosystems and human health. The project is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme (PLAN-B initiative).

How a photo is georeferenced

The task is simpler than it sounds. The screen is split in two: on the left, the night-time ISS photograph; on the right, a map. Volunteers look for recognisable features on both sides, such as a coastline, a motorway or a junction, and mark the same point on the photo and on the map. Each pair of points is called a control point. At least three are needed, and ideally seven well spread across the image. The system warps the photo to fit the map and lets you preview the result before submitting it.

The team on the day: three ASAAF volunteers, Celia Rubio Morales, Rocío Antón Freire and Víctor Pascual Pedrosa; Carlos Tapia Ayuga (AINIA); Verena Rodríguez González (ESAC), who coordinated the activity; and researcher Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel (right).

A full room all morning

The room was busy all morning. People of all ages sat down, and there were lots of children, who set about finding streets and coastlines with a fluency that more than one adult struggled to match. Between screens, we showed the project’s models and the app’s game.

We also handed out teaching units to the teachers who dropped by, along with a printed leaflet, made by Verena, who works at ESAC, explaining how to take part from the app.

There were six of us in total: three ASAAF volunteers, Carlos and Verena, who coordinated the activity. Thank you all for your effort on a long day.

What the data says

The numbers were encouraging. Open Day was the busiest day since September, with around 150 tasks completed in a single day, almost all by anonymous users, as expected at an event open to the public. In the days beforehand there was already an uptick, which we attribute in part to the training of the volunteers.

At the time of writing, the project has gathered more than 32,000 control points, 1,818 georeferenced photos and 4,237 of the 27,471 planned tasks, that is, 15.4%. There is still a lot to do.

Tasks completed per day (registered and anonymous) and cumulative total. The dashed line marks Open Day.

Now it’s your turn

You don’t need to be at ESAC to take part. Go to lostatnight.org, click on participate and you will be assigned a random photo. If you would like to see how it works first, there is a video tutorial and a manual. If you are a teacher and are interested in the teaching units, write to us and we will send them to you.

Thank you to ESAC for opening its doors to us, and to everyone who sat down for a while to put maps to the night as seen from space.

La entrada A Morning at ESAC Geolocating ISS Photos with Lost at Night se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

In late September, we met in Berlin with the rest of the consortium to start working towards the project’s objectives.

THRIVE (Towards a Harmonised landscape that expands the Role of citizen science in biodIVersity & Ecosystem services monitoring) is a Horizon Europe project, coordinated by the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), that brings together 16 European organisations to strengthen and harmonise the role of citizen science in biodiversity and ecosystem observation.

This past September, the partners met at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. It was two and a half days of workshops, discussions and co-creation sessions, with natural history museums, citizen science specialists, collaborative biodiversity observation platforms, universities and non-governmental organisations. It was also a chance to get to know each other in person, set objectives and start working with a shared direction and shared values.

Project objectives

Europe has many citizen science initiatives that collect valuable biodiversity data, but each one uses its own tools, methods, formats and protocols to acquire, process and store information. This makes it difficult for that data to be combined, reused and taken into account when decisions are made. Keeping people involved in the long term is not easy either. THRIVE wants to change this picture and move towards a more coordinated and harmonised system, in which citizen science and biodiversity initiatives use standardised resources and follow common guidelines to make it easier to use data in research and public policy.

To achieve this, the project works on three fronts: participation, data and policy. It will do so in three phases: first mapping and analysing what already exists, then consolidating it together with the main stakeholders and, finally, scaling it up. Among its goals are making it easier for more people to take part in biodiversity observation in a harmonised way, including groups that currently face more obstacles to doing so, and creating a European network that connects those who work in citizen science, those who research biodiversity observation and protection, and the bodies that develop public policy. Training and resources will also be offered, and citizen observations will be linked to regulations such as the Habitats Directive and European nature restoration legislation. All of this will be tested in seven case studies in very different ecosystems. In addition, THRIVE will bring citizen science into schools, so that students can reconnect with science and with nature.

Ibercivis’s role

At Ibercivis, we are responsible for identifying, analysing and harmonising the tools and methodologies used to obtain and manage biodiversity data, for analysing the use of artificial intelligence-based tools, and for managing their practical deployment through the case studies. The aim is for citizen science data to be easier to acquire, share and reuse, and to be useful for the study of biodiversity and for public policy.

Our tasks include drawing up a roadmap towards harmonising the tools, protocols and standards currently used in citizen-led biodiversity observation, and developing an artificial intelligence tool that helps identify which citizen science resources can meet specific biodiversity policy needs. These activities will include co-design processes with users and professionals to ensure alignment with their real needs, as well as training on biodiversity data management in line with FAIR principles, aimed at projects, data managers and developers.

La entrada Ibercivis attends the THRIVE kick-off: citizen science to care for and better understand biodiversity se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Interested citizens are already measuring Zaragoza’s light with lux meters during night walks and uploading the data to Open-red. 17,000 measurements have been recorded in Spain and in several cities in Finland, Poland and Austria.

We take science to the streets of Zaragoza

The PLAN-B project works to understand and mitigate the impacts of artificial light at night (ALAN) on terrestrial biodiversity. Its Spanish pilot, in Zaragoza, recently reached an important milestone. At Ibercivis, we coordinated a meeting to present the project, strengthen local capacities and launch practical citizen science activities in collaboration with the Agrupación Astronómica Aragonesa (AAA), one of the most active amateur astronomy and dark-sky advocacy organisations in the region.

Laying the foundations of the Zaragoza Community of Practice

One of the pillars of PLAN-B is the creation of Communities of Practice (CoPs) in its four European pilot areas: Gdansk, Leipzig, Belo Horizonte and Zaragoza. These communities bring together a “quadruple helix” of diverse stakeholders (local public authorities, researchers, naturalists, representatives of the local business sector and citizens) who share an interest in protecting darker, quieter ecosystems.

The meeting was led by our director, Francisco Sanz, developer of the Open-red data visualisation platform and the citizen science app Lost at Night, and by Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel, a PLAN-B researcher.

During the session with the Agrupación Astronómica Aragonesa, attendees learned about PLAN-B’s objectives, its open-access database and the upcoming public policy instruments to reduce light and noise pollution. The session formally established the Zaragoza Community of Practice: a local network of people who help spread the word and collaborate actively, committed to monitoring environmental quality in urban and peri-urban areas.

Lux meters, night walks and the Open-red platform

Citizen science makes it possible to turn local interest in light pollution into useful data. To this end, in this first campaign with the Agrupación Astronómica Aragonesa we provided participants with calibrated lux meters and light meters.

With these devices, participants take guided night observation walks around Zaragoza. During the walks they measure ambient light levels in different urban areas, parks and natural corridors. The data are uploaded to Open-red, our open data platform, and form an accessible repository built by the community itself.

These street-level data complement PLAN-B’s high-resolution satellite imagery and aerial mapping. They help identify the “dark corridors” worth protecting and the areas where excess light affects nocturnal wildlife and human wellbeing.

Since measurement activities began, 17,000 measurements have been recorded, taken by participants in various parts of Spain and in European cities in Finland, Poland and Austria.

How to take part in the Zaragoza pilot

The Zaragoza Community of Practice is open to anyone who wants to contribute to a darker, more sustainable environment, whether from astronomy, studies, life in the neighbourhood or environmental advocacy. Those who would like to join the upcoming night walks can write to our local team at dlisbona[at]ibercivis.es.

Those who prefer to take part from home can do so with the Lost at Night app, which allows users to georeference photographs taken by astronauts from the International Space Station.

Progress, maps and results from participants in Zaragoza and beyond will be published on the PLAN-B blog and social channels.

La entrada Ibercivis and the Agrupación Astronómica Aragonesa measure light pollution in Zaragoza as part of PLAN-B se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Until 16 October, anyone can consult the Strategy and share their views through a form.

The National Strategy for Scientific and Innovation Culture (ENCCI) 2027-2030 aims to advance the right of everyone to participate in science, promote a public communication of science that strengthens mutual trust between science and society, and contribute to a better-informed democracy.

Before its final approval, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities has opened a public information period. This is a mechanism for public participation that gathers the views of the population on the strategic actions that will shape the relationship between science, innovation and society between 2027 and 2030. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) provides technical coordination and supports the definition, development and monitoring of the measures.

Until 16 October 2026, anyone interested can consult the document and send suggestions, comments and proposals through the form on the ENCCI website. The contributions will help enrich and improve the final text, strengthening relevant aspects and incorporating different perspectives and social needs.

At the Ibercivis Foundation, we support public participation in research and encourage individuals, organisations and communities linked to citizen science and scientific culture to take part in its development.

La entrada Ibercivis invites the public to submit contributions to the National Strategy for Scientific and Innovation Culture, which aims to advance the right to participate in science se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The contest encourages work on soil as an essential resource for ecosystems, food security and the climate, through drawings, experiments, videos, podcasts and other creative formats.

A contest to put soil at the centre

ECHO Soil Challenge – Soil Stories combines creativity, scientific experimentation and science communication so that classrooms and citizens can explore soil from their own perspective. Entries must be based on the ECHO sampling kit or on SoiLab for Teens, the project’s educational tool for hands-on activities in schools, although they can be freely reinterpreted.

Categories and participation

There are four categories: children aged 6 to 10, children aged 11 to 13, young people aged 14 to 19, and ECHO participants acting as Soil Ambassadors. Three winning projects will be selected in each one.

In the first three categories, the entry is submitted by the teacher on behalf of their class or group. Entries may be in Spanish or in English; audiovisual entries must include English subtitles. To protect the privacy of minors, entries must not include images, recordings or full names that could identify them. The call is open to applicants based in Spain and eight other countries.

Dates and recognitions

The jury’s decision will be announced on 16 December 2026, and a final webinar with the winning projects will take place on 15 January 2027. Winners will receive an official certificate, present their work at the webinar and have the chance to chat with an ECHO expert. Their project will also be published on the ECHO website and social media channels.

A jury from the ECHO consortium, with expertise in education, science communication and soil science, will assess the creativity, scientific accuracy and educational impact of each entry.

How to participate

The full rules, accepted formats and the entry form are available on the contest page on the ECHO website. For inspiration, see SoiLab for Teens and the ECHO educational resources.

La entrada ECHO Soil Challenge – Soil Stories: a European contest to tell the story of soil se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The heartbeat of the map: thousands of samples to protect our water

The digital heart of Life-Nitrazens is a living open-data map, fed during this sample-collection phase. Our commitment is ambitious: to mobilise at least 2,500 citizens to collect and analyse 3,000 water samples (surface water, groundwater and tap water). This large participatory monitoring network covers a representative area of 34,435 km², linking the Duero and Ebro river basins in Spain (30,412 km²) with the Mondego basin in Portugal (4,013 km²).

Thanks to this collective effort, the project is filling critical gaps in environmental information on small water bodies and in rural areas that often fall outside official monitoring networks, democratising information and ensuring that the data are accessible to everyone. All this effort has resulted in almost 600 samples collected across dozens of measurement points in the Ebro and Duero basins during this first sampling phase, which has also laid the foundations of the citizen infrastructure of nodes, ambassadors and participants, who will keep collecting samples in the following stages of the campaign.

In addition, the data provided by citizens during these nitrate monitoring campaigns will be available on the Life-Nitrazens Data Exchange Platform being prepared by the project and in the federated data space that is also under construction, so that they can be consulted and also used in scientific research on nitrate pollution in our water bodies.

Geonity: Ibercivis technology that brings rigour to citizen science

How can we ensure that a sample taken by a neighbour in their village is scientifically valid? This is where Geonity comes in, the citizen science platform developed by Ibercivis, a partner in the project. This mobile app, already used in other projects of the foundation, has been specifically adapted for Life-Nitrazens to guide volunteers step by step in a simple and intuitive way.

On reaching a water point, participants use Geonity to:

• Geolocate the sample with precise GPS coordinates. To protect privacy on the public map, the system blurs private points (such as wells or household taps), showing only an approximate area.
• Record key metadata such as the type of water (tap, well, canal or river), the date, the exact time of collection and the weather conditions at that moment.
• Upload photographs of the surroundings that provide visual context to facilitate scientific analysis and validation of the sample.

Even if participants are in a natural area with no mobile coverage, the app stores all the data locally and sends it automatically to the server as soon as the internet connection is restored. This digital record is essential: the quality control protocol requires every bottle delivered to be linked to its metadata on the platform, so that laboratories can process it and the traceability of the sample is guaranteed.

How our campaigns are designed: a cyclical and rigorous roadmap

To ensure that the data reflect the temporal and seasonal changes in water, the project is structured around three major sampling campaigns of five months each:

• Campaign 1: April to August 2026, just concluded, with excellent participation figures.
• Campaign 2: October 2026 to February 2027.
• Campaign 3: April to August 2027.

Each of these campaigns follows a rigorous operating cycle divided into five phases that repeat in an orderly way:

1. Phase I – Setting up the Network: The physical collection Nodes are activated and the local Ambassadors, who energise the volunteer community, are trained.
2. Phase II – Preparing the mini-campaigns: Short, time-limited windows of a few days to optimise logistics, define the sampling points and hand out the science kits (bottles, labels and thermal bags) to volunteers.
3. Phase III – Field sampling: The big day of fieldwork. Volunteers rinse the bottle three times beforehand with water from the sampling point itself to remove impurities, fill the container avoiding air bubbles and place it in the insulated bag, protected from the heat. Time is critical: the sample must be delivered to its reference Node within a maximum of 3 hours to prevent the nitrates from changing chemically.
4. Phase IV – Logistics and laboratory analysis: Samples are refrigerated immediately at the Nodes and transported weekly under strict cold-chain conditions to the reference laboratories: the University of Burgos (UBU) for the Duero basin, CITA-Aragón for the Ebro basin, and the University of Coimbra together with Aguas do Centro Litoral for the Mondego basin. There, the exact nitrate concentration (in mg/L) is analysed with technical precision.
5. Phase V – Data validation and transparency: Before publication, the analytical results are checked and validated by cross-referencing the laboratory data with the metadata recorded by the participant in the app and with the Nodes’ control sheets. Once validated and their quality guaranteed, they are integrated into the Life-Nitrazens Data Exchange Platform (developed by Osoigo) for open viewing and public download under the Open Science model.

Our sincere thanks to our community

None of this would be possible without the extraordinary social fabric that sustains the project. At Ibercivis, as a partner in Life-Nitrazens, we want to thank each of the Ambassadors for being the social driving force in their rural communities. We thank the local Nodes (town councils, civic centres and associations) for generously lending their spaces and safeguarding the samples. And, of course, we thank every participant who has decided to spend their time collecting water so that their effort becomes scientific knowledge.

Thanks to all of you, we are building a collective tool that protects public health, safeguards our ecosystems and guides administrations towards fairer and more effective water policies.

Join the change: take part in the upcoming campaigns

Do you want to know what water runs through your nearest tap, well or river? Do you want your commitment to become useful data that protects your territory? The LIFE-NITRAZENS Local Support Network is still very much alive and always open to new hands.

It doesn’t matter if you didn’t take part in the earlier phases; every new mini-campaign is a chance to start from scratch. Sign up through our official form and we will assign you to your nearest Node, welcoming you to our active WhatsApp community so that you receive your science kit and all the training you need.

Sign up here to take part as a volunteer or ambassador.

La entrada Ibercivis on the nitrate map: how collective action is transforming the future of water in Life-Nitrazens se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The shared goal is for citizen science to have a stable place in the European research area, and for the people who take part, whether or not they are institutionally affiliated, to be able to access its resources and services.

RIECS-Concept: a research infrastructure for citizen science

RIECS-Concept, coordinated by Fermín Serrano, is conceptualising a future research infrastructure for excellent citizen science, designed to enter the roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and intended to provide resources and services across different domains.

Citizen science brings its own specificities compared with other research infrastructures: participants act as users of the infrastructure, but also as providers of resources and data, and as actors in its governance. This particularity opens up relevant possibilities, such as citizen science being recognised as a horizontal capacity within the European Research Area (ERA), or facilitating evidence-based decision-making through citizen-generated data that is sovereign, high-quality and trusted. To this end, the project addresses the structural barriers that currently hold back excellence, such as fragmentation, interoperability and sustainability.

After 18 months of work, the consortium has completed a first conceptual draft of what RIECS could look like. The published catalogue is a first technical feasibility study which, together with the strategic plan, will form the core of a future application to the ESFRI roadmap.

Over these 18 months, more than 700 scientific papers have been reviewed and more than 4,400 technologies assessed. 50 engagement activities have been carried out across 10 countries, with online questionnaires reaching around 500 people, and 823 user stories have been collected. From this, 37 needs and 31 technical requirements have been identified, all with human validation and expert oversight through consortium review, interviews, and domain-expert validation.

The project already has orientations on what RIECS should build and operate itself, what it should provide as services, and what it should federate or connect with existing capacities. These orientations will be further refined over the coming months. RIECS-Concept will end in December 2027.

EOSC Citizen Science Node: a citizen science node in the EOSC Federation

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) champions the management and use of research data to ensure the scientific community has access to data-driven science, with continuous access to and reliable reuse of that data. It is organised as a federation connecting nodes from different countries, thematic domains and institutions. EOSC Citizen Science Node (EOSC-CSN), coordinated by Francisco Sanz, is Ibercivis’s proposal to create a citizen science node. The project is also a practical implementation pathway for RIECS and, at the same time, a design foundation and enabler for it.

Its objective is to make the EOSC Federation genuinely accessible and useful to the European citizen science community, both for researchers and for people taking part in citizen science without institutional affiliation. It may also bring new communities, citizen-generated datasets and citizen science capabilities into the Federation, while enabling other EOSC nodes to use citizen science as a research methodology in their own work.

In just three months, the first EOSC-CSN Project Charter has been drawn up, which has just been accepted by EOSC GRAVITY. It sets out two main objectives: enabling trusted access to EOSC services for non-affiliated citizen scientists, through a Community Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (Community AAI), and establishing an interoperable environment that supports the full citizen science project lifecycle, from project creation and data acquisition, through validation and analysis, to publication and contributor attribution. EOSC GRAVITY reviewers have also shared recommendations that will help refine the concept and plan the next implementation steps. The EOSC GRAVITY Cascading Grant for the EOSC-CSN Preparatory Project will end in November 2026.

La entrada Ibercivis advances the European infrastructure for citizen science with RIECS-Concept and EOSC-CSN se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.