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.

Ibercivis and CIEMAT coordinate EOSC-CSN, which will establish the governance framework and technical architecture for integrating citizen science communities into the European Open Science Cloud. Funded by Horizon Europe, the project launches an open call for expressions of interest from European experts.

Fundación Ibercivis and the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT) today launch EOSC-CSN (EOSC Citizen Science Node), a Horizon Europe initiative that will design the first thematic citizen science node within the EOSC Federation — the digital research infrastructure connecting scientific institutions across more than 40 European countries.

The project, funded with €50,000 over six months under the EOSC Gravity Preparatory Grants scheme, is completed by Citizen Science Italia and the University of Leiden (representing Citizen Science Nederland).

A strategic pathway for the European citizen science community

The EOSC Federation currently depends on academic credentials (EduGAIN) for resource access, inadvertently excluding thousands of citizen researchers, NGOs, and participatory science communities that generate high-value scientific data across Europe. EOSC-CSN addresses this structural barrier by designing a multi-level governance model, AARC-compliant identity proxies, and FAIR validation tooling specifically adapted to community-led research.

The project’s primary deliverable is the Node’s Project Charter — the foundational document establishing the technical and operational architecture for integrating citizen science into the EOSC Federation. This charter will serve as the roadmap toward a permanent European Research Infrastructure (ESFRI/ERIC), backed by letters of intent from the science ministries of Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The project follows a ‘Design-by-Validation’ approach: a panel of 15 Community Leaders will functionally test the proposed solutions, while an Expert Group of 10–15 specialists will provide rigorous peer review of governance, technical and legal compliance with EOSC standards.

“EOSC-CSN opens a strategic pathway for the European citizen science community. For the first time, the continent’s public research infrastructure is being explicitly designed to include unaffiliated researchers alongside institutional scientists. What we build in these six months will define how citizens participate in European science for the next decade,” said the Ibercivis coordination team.

Open call: 10–15 European experts

In parallel with the launch, the project opens a public call to constitute an Expert Group of 10–15 European specialists who will peer-review and validate the Project Charter. Profiles sought include expertise in citizen science platforms and networks, EOSC and FAIR data management, participatory research, research infrastructure governance, legal and ethical aspects, interoperability and metadata, and sustainability models.

Participation involves 2–3 online meetings of approximately 90 minutes between June and August 2026, plus document review (approximately 1–2 working days). Selected experts will receive a fee of €300 for their contribution. University or institutional affiliation is not required. The call is open until 16 June 2026.

Expressions of interest should be sent to info@ibercivis.es with the subject line ‘EoI: EOSC-CSN Expert Group’, including: name, affiliation and country; half a page on relevant experience; area(s) of contribution; and one concrete idea the EOSC-CSN should address. Full details at eosc.riecs.eu.

About EOSC-CSN

EOSC-CSN (Sub-Grant Agreement EOSCGravity-PREP-2026-027-EOSC-CSN) is funded under EOSC Gravity (GA 101188045) by the European Union, May–November 2026. Views expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the European Commission. Further information: eosc.riecs.eu — eosc.eu/horizon-europe-projects/eosc-csn

La entrada Launch of the EOSC-CSN project se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.