IMPACTOSCC
Knowing the impacts of citizen science to strengthen it
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Knowledge of impacts – i.e. the changes and consequences that follow from an activity – is essential to consolidate good practices, as well as to learn from failed outcomes and/or processes.
ImpactosCC is a nationwide project aimed at finding out about the different impacts of citizen science projects developed in Spain.
In Spain, we have been working on this since at least 2016, through the Citizen Science Observatory, a collaborative project launched by the Ibercivis Foundation with co-funding from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). Since long before, many different social agents have been working together to consolidate citizen science in and from Spain. In these years we have observed that, sometimes, we may not be fully aware of the relevant impacts of our activity.
That is why we launched ‘ImpactosCC: knowing the impacts of citizen science to strengthen it’, a one-year project, co-funded by FECYT-Ministry of Science and Innovation.
PROJECT CHARACTERISTICS
Project Type: National
Duration: 2023-2024
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The double objective of ImpactosCC is, on the one hand, to facilitate the knowledge of the impacts of each project, and on the other hand, to obtain a broad and as detailed as possible landscape of the impacts of citizen science in Spain and its various territories, useful for people/communities/entities working in citizen science, as well as for all those people/communities/entities concerned by the impacts of citizen science. We will analyse the following impacts:
(1) Scientific-technological.
(2) Environmental.
(3) Socio-cultural, equality and equity.
(4) Economic, political and governance. The project is approached with the conviction that all perspectives are necessary.
OUR ACTIVITIES
CC Impacts will officially start on 1 December 2023 and end on 31 November 2024. We already have a good amount of good information – obtained collaboratively during these years in multiple meetings, workshops, as well as information shared through the Observatory -, with tools that have been developed in the European and international citizen science community, and with ongoing collaborations with different institutions and communities.
The main tasks are summarised as:
(1) state-of-the-art elaboration and community building (decentralised yet harmonised),
(2) collection of information according to agreed upon criteria
(3) analysis of information and dissemination of results at local, regional, national and international levels.
IBERCIVIS’ ROLE
Although Ibercivis will coordinate the tasks as necessary, we want the project – and its resources – to be for everyone who wants to/can benefit and contribute. We seek to contribute to amortising all the efforts made by and among all and those to come, strengthening each other, creating cooperation networks; in short, achieving an increasingly open, inclusive and sustainable citizen science.
