Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement in Horizon Europe
Staska Mrak Jamnik, Head of the University Office for Research
U niversity of Ljubljana, September, 2021
PROGRAM
13:00 – 13:45 Basic guidelines of the European Commission regarding the engagement of citizens, civil society and end users in research projects of Horizon Europe Staška Mrak Jamnik, Msc., Head of the University Office for Research, UL 13:45 – 14:05 Example of good practice: Citizens science in the WECOUNT project
prof. dr. Lucija Ažman Momirski, Faculty of Architecture, UL
14:05 – 14:25 Example of good practice: Participation of citizens, civil society and end-users in the SPRINT project
assist. prof. Matjaž Glavan, Biotechnical Faculty, UL 14:25 – 14:35 Questions and answers
Invitation
All teachers and researchers of the University of Ljubljana are invited to join the EUTOPIA’s Citizen Science Community of Practice.
The aim is to strengthen Citizen Science capacity across EUTOPIA partner institutions by raising awareness, creating networking opportunities and providing training, tools and other support. This community will be a space for interdisciplinary networking and peer-learning sessions with both local and international colleagues and
partners. Practices will be collected in a re-usable online training module/toolkit.
Contact mojca.kotar@uni-lj.si
EUTOPIA‘s Citizen Science Community of Practice
Horizon Europe
Next EU framework programme for investments in
research and innovation (2021 – 2027)
Scientific impact
Promote scientific excellence, support the creation and diffusion of high-quality new fundamental and applied knowledge, skills, training and mobility of researchers, attract talent at all levels, and contribute to full engagement of Union's talent pool in actions supported under the Programme.
Societal impact
Generate knowledge, strengthen the impact of R&I in developing, supporting and implementing Union policies, and support the uptake of innovative solutions in industry, notably in SMEs, and society to address global challenges, inter alia the SDGs
Economic impact
Foster all forms of innovation, facilitate technological development, demonstration and knowledge transfer, and strengthen deployment of innovative solutions
THREE TYPES OF IMPACT BASED ON OBJECTIVES
Impact design in HORIZON EUROPE
Source: Kadunc, M., European Commission (June, 2020). Paving the pathways to impact in Horizon Europe [PowerPoint slides].
Citizen, Civil Society and End-user engagement is a programme principle and operational objective of Horizon Europe that refers to the opening up of R&I processes to society and is part of Open Science Practices.
The principles of Open Science Practices are described in Horizon Europe Programme Guide:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021- 2027/horizon/guidance/programme-guide_horizon_en.pdf
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement as
part of Open Science practices
Why ?
Opening up the R&I system towards society and supporting citizens, civil society and end-users to participate in R&I – as sources of ideas, knowledge and/or data, as data collectors and/or analysers, and/or as testers and/or end users:
- enlarges the collective intelligence, capabilities and scope of the R&I and is likely to lead to greater creativity and robustness of the outcomes and reduced time-to-market of the innovative products and services.
- increases the relevance and responsiveness of R&I, ensuring that its outcomes align with the needs, expectations and values of society.
- it is a key element for improving the transparency, co-ownership and trust of society in the process and outcomes of R&I.
- conducting R&I openly, responsibly, transparently, and in adherence to the highest standards of research integrity and ethics is also important for responding to increased science denial.
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement in research
• ‘Citizens’ should be understood as individuals acting on their own initiative and not on behalf of their employer or sectoral interests. It does not refer to any legal
citizenship(s) that people may or may not hold.
• ‘Civil society’ refers to the ensemble of citizens and civil society organisations that are active in the public sphere but distinct from government and business.
• ‘Civil society organisations (CSOs)’ include all non-state, not-for-profit structures, such as citizens’ associations, patient groups, professional societies or groups,
consumer groups, humanitarian organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), foundations and charities.
• ‘End-users’ are public, private or civil (i.e. civil society, see above) organisations that constitute potential users of the R&I outputs.
Citizens and civil society
Where ?
* The European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) is not part of the Specific Programme
EURATOM HORIZON EUROPE
Research actions
Development actions SPECIFIC PROGRAMME:
EUROPEAN DEFENCE FUND
Exclusive focus on defence research
& development
Fusion
Joint Research
Center Fission SPECIFIC PROGRAMME IMPLEMENTING HORIZON EUROPE & EIT*
Exclusive focus on civil applications
WIDENING PARTICIPATION AND STRENGTHENING THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH AREA Widening participation & spreading excellence Reforming & Enhancing the European R&I system
Pillar I
EXCELLENT SCIENCE
European Research Council MarieSkłodowska-Curie Research Infrastructures
Pillar III
INNOVATIVE EUROPE
European Innovation Council European Innovation
Ecosystems European Institute of Innovation & Technology*
Pillar II
GLOBAL CHALLENGES &
EUROPEAN INDUSTRIAL COMPETITIVENESS
•Health
•Culture, Creativity &
Inclusive Society
•Civil Security for Society
•Digital, Industry & Space
•Climate, Energy &
Mobility
•Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture & Environment
Clusters
Joint Research Centre
Source: European Commission (May, 2021). Horizon Europe, The next EU Research & Innovation Investment Programme (2021-2027) [PowerPoint slides].
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement in Horizon Europe Specific calls in Pillar II
Topic number Topic title Budget per proposal/total (EUR)
HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01- 07
Politics and the impact of online social networks and new media
2-3/9 million
HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01-12 Fostering a just transition in Europe 3-4/10 million
HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01-16 Co-Funded Partnership: Driving Urban Transitions to a sustainable future (DUT)
130/130 million
HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-01 European participation in global biodiversity genomics endavours aimed at identifying all biodiversity on Earth
10-20/20 million
HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01- 16
Identification, assessment and management of existing and emerging food safety issues
6/12 million
HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01-05 Forestry - European observatory of climate change impacts and demonstration network of climate smart restoration pilots
15/15 million
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement in Horizon Europe Specific calls in ERA Work Programm:
Reforming & Enhancing the European R&I system
Topic number Topic title Budget per proposal/total (EUR)
HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01-60 A capacity-building and brokering network to make citizen science an integral part of the European Research Area
4/4 million
HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01-61 Supporting and giving recognition to citizen science in the European Research Area
5/5 million
HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01-44 Developing and piloting training on the practice of open and responsible research and innovation
3.5/3.5 million
Each Horizon Europe project proposal should provide clear and succinct information on how citizen, civil society and end-user engagement will be implemented in the project, where/if appropriate.
Engagement’ means the involvement of citizens and civil society in co-designing (participatory design) R&I agendas,
co-creating R&I contents, and/or co-assessing R&I outcomes .
In certain cases, citizens, civil society and end-users may be involved across different stages of the R&I and/or policy cycle, by
- deciding on the research to be conducted, - conducting that research,
- analysing and
- interpreting the data, and
- engaging in related advocacy or policy activities.
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement as part of Open Science practices
Source: Horizon Europe Programme Guide
The extent of engagement in the proposal could range from
- one-off activities alongside other methodological approaches to
- being the primary focus or methodological approach of the project itself.
Engagement in multi-beneficiary projects will require resources (ex. Train the Trainers costs – recruiting, training and monitoring the facilitators) and expertise
and is therefore often conducted by dedicated interlocutor organisations or staff with relevant expertise .
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement as part of Open Science practices
Source: Horizon Europe Programme Guide
1.
Excellence –aspects to be taken into account.− Clarity and pertinence of the project’s objectives, ...
− Soundness of the proposed methodology, ….
-the quality of open science practices, including sharing and management of research outputs and engagement of citizens, civil society and end users where appropriate
1.1 Objectives and ambition [e.g. 4 pages]
1.2 Methodology [e.g. 15 pages]
Describe how appropriate open science practices are implemented as an integral part of the proposed methodology. ……
Open science practices include…..-and involving all relevant
knowledge actors including citizens, civil society and end users in the co-creation of R&I agendas and contents (such as citizen science).
!!! This question does not refer to outreach actions that may be planned as part of communication, dissemination and exploitation activities. These aspects should instead be described below under ‘Impact’.
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement as
part of Open Science practices in project proposal
How?
Citizen, Civil Society and End-User Engagement
1. co-design activities 2. co-creation activities 3. co-assessment activities o workshops,
o public consultations, focus groups or
o other means to develop R&I agendas, roadmaps and policies
often including deep discussion on the implications, the ethics, the benefits and the challenges related to R&I courses of action or technology development;
Co-design could be:
- the overall focus of a project (e.g. to develop a roadmap for a certain technology),
- a Work Package within a project that uses the outcomes of the co-design in subsequent Work Packages, or
- a supporting Work Package that provides continual feedback on project activities throughout the project cycle.
involving citizens and/or end-users directly in the development of new knowledge or innovation, for instance through
- citizen science (public participation in scientific research) - possible
clasification:
o Long running citizen science, o citizen cyberscience (technology
driven) or
o community science
- user-led innovation (innovation involving end users or user communities);
o assisting in the monitoring,
o evaluation and feedback to governance of a project, projects, policies or programmes on an iterative or even continual basis
Co-Design activities
Public dialogue on genome editing in Prague
DATE30 November 2019
What do the public think about genome editing? That’s what we hope to find out through our public dialogues on genome editing which takes place in Prague on 30 November. The aim with the public dialogue is to discuss the risks and opportunities of disruptive technologies and identify any concerns the public might have.
Source: Co-creation | ORION Open Science (orion-openscience.eu)
Co-Creation activities
Long-running citizen science
Ecological or biological observations in which people survey plants, fungi, and animals, are very long-running activities. In 2012, a review identified over 230 such projects, which are called "biological recording" in the UK. A good example of this is the British Trust of Ornithology/ Joint Nature Conservation Committee/ RSPB Breeding Bird Survey. It was established in 1994 and is now the main method for monitoring population changes of the UK’s breeding birds.
Archaeology, where the public continues to participate in excavation projects. This is an area that is influenced by technology - for example, in 2010, Albert Yu-Min Lin and colleagues devised a system based on high-resolution satellite imagery to engage over 10,000 volunteers in the task of assessing potential locations for the unknown burial site of Genghis Khan. The system asked volunteers to evaluate an area visually and mark locations that they considered as potentially interesting. The ability to engage a huge number of volunteers enabled the examination of a very large area (6,000 sq km), yielding 55 candidate sites for further archaeological studies on the ground. The
application that was developed for this task eventually evolved into the Tomnod system, now used by Digital Globe for humanitarian and other crowdsourcing efforts.
Co-Creation activities
Citizens cyberscience
Volunteer computing is a type of participation in a project by downloading software to your computer or smartphone, which allows it to use the devices’ processing capacity when you are not using it. An example from earth sciences is the climate prediction project weather@home, where people let scientists at Oxford University run climate models on their computers. There are also many health-related projects in this area.
Volunteer thinking is when people participate in a project that sends them information over the internet and asks them to classify or annotate it. An example is Snapshot Serengeti, in which scientists share images from movement-sensitive cameras (commonly known as a Camera Traps) and ask volunteers to classify/
identify the animals in the image, or any other interesting detail.
Co-Creation activities
Community science
Source: Horizon Europe Programme Guide
In participatory sensing, the participants in the project have a role to play in deciding where the sensing takes place. In the everyaware project, the WideNoise app was used with people living near Heathrow airport to collect data on airplane noise.
DIY science projects are those in which people are using Do It Yourself techniques and approaches to address issues that concern them, either in their environment or in a laboratory. DIY Biology (DIY Bio) community are exploring aspects of modern biology through an exploration of what they can do with DNA analysis – this is called Biohacking.
Eyewire is a game to map the brain from Princeton University. This citizen
science human-based computation game challenges players to map retinal neurons.
Eyewire launched on December 10, 2012. Over five years, 250,000 people from 150 countries have signed up. The game utilizes data generated by the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
Eyewire gameplay advances neuroscience by enabling the reconstruction of
morphological neuron data, which helps researchers model information processing circuits. Anyone with an internet connection can participate by solving 2D puzzles to fit together segmentation produced by artificial intelligence used to map the connectome (map of neural connections in the brain). In Eyewire, players reconstruct 3D models of neurons from electron microscope images by solving puzzles. Playing requires no scientific background.
Source: Eyewire - Wikipedia
Co-Creation activities
Community science
● STEP CHANGE: Wildlife conservation in Slovenia
The Citizen Science Initiative, within the STEP CHANGE project, aims to test for the potential of citizen science to contribute to wildlife monitoring and conservation in Slovenia. The main objective of this CSI is to improve the capacity to produce evidence of wildlife presence, movements and behaviours in Slovenia by developing an experimental campaign to extend the possibility to collect data beyond hunters including also beginners (outdoor enthusiasts, camera trappers and photographers), and by setting up a verification data procedure.
Citizen Scientists will be recruited from: i) members of the Hunting Association of Slovenia and from ii) organizations of outdoor enthusiasts, farmers, mountaineers, students organizations.... Participants will be asked to use a dedicated app for mobile phones, which will be developed by autumn 2021, to record wildlife presence and roadkills. Hunters, who received dedicated training, will also record biometric and sexually dimorphic traits for the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and also record parasites found on animals (e.g. ticks).
Co-creation and co-assessment activities
Citizen science
Source: EU-Citizen.Science :STEP CHANGE: Wildlife conservation in Slovenia
Source: Engage2020 project: http://actioncatalogue.eu/
Possible methods to engage public
Help ?
● The Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) toolkit
● Action catalogue of inclusive research methods
● Methods to engage the public
● The societal readiness Thinking Tool - alignement of the project activities with societal needs and expectations
● Innovation Compass Self-check Tool for SMEs
● Living innovation co-creation tool-kit for responsible innovation
● Resources to open up research and innovation actors to society
● Models and guidelines to increase patient engagement in health research
● RRI Practice Handbook for research organisations
● EU portal for citizen science projects, initiatives, networks, organisations, and training courses
● European Citizen Science Association
Resources of tools and methods
PROGRAM
13:00 – 13:45 Basic guidelines of the European Commission regarding the engagement of citizens, civil society and end users in research projects of Horizon Europe Staška Mrak Jamnik, Msc., Head of the University Office for Research, UL 13:45 – 14:05 Example of good practice: Citizens science in the WECOUNT project
prof. dr. Lucija Ažman Momirski, Faculty of Architecture, UL
14:05 – 14:25 Example of good practice: Participation of citizens, civil society and end-users in the SPRINT project
assist. prof. Matjaž Glavan, Biotechnical Faculty, UL 14:25 – 14:35 Questions and answers
