The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors. ECS will capitalise on EU-funded actions such as the EU-Citizen.Science platform and Cos4Cloud to support links and collaboration between members of the European Citizen Science community, who will be involved in the co-design and co-creation of a large variety of services, strategic priorities, training opportunities and policy recommendations. A key focus is on inclusivity, which will be achieved through dedicated actions such as engaging libraries affiliated to the Public Libraries 2030 network to attract underrepresented publics, as well as ad-hoc support to countries/regions lacking citizen science networks, platforms and policy recognition. ECS will create extensive capacity building opportunities by engaging in particular excellent researchers in a variety of disciplines, for example through the involvement of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, and emerging Horizon Europe Missions, Clusters, and wider ERA activities, to allow easy access for newcomers in citizen science activities.
ECS is committed to push modern science towards open science as its modus operandi by providing open collaborative spaces where citizen scientists can familiarise with the concept of “open and FAIR data with open and FAIR tools” and get actively engaged, while connecting with existing e-infrastructures such as EOSC through the collaborative development of data/metadata services. The engagement of the Global Citizen Science Partnership will guarantee wide international cooperation. These efforts will result in a number of key scientific, societal and policy impacts which will strongly contribute to securing Europe’s global position as a leader in citizen science throughout the entire research and innovation system.
