The University of Barcelona opens a website on citizen science training
The University of Barcelona has recently opened a website on citizen science to train the teaching and research staff, the students, civil entities and other collectives in this type of collaborative science. The UB is one of the universities that takes part in the Citizen Science NOW project, whose objective is the empowerment of citizens in skills to develop citizen science projects.
The University of Barcelona has recently opened a website on citizen science to train the teaching and research staff, the students, civil entities and other collectives in this type of collaborative science. The UB is one of the universities that takes part in the Citizen Science NOW project, whose objective is the empowerment of citizens in skills to develop citizen science projects.
According to Josep Perelló, professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona, and director of the OpenSystems-UB group and coordinator of the project, “citizen science is one of the pillars of open science, a way for exploring the future universities and a key element for obtaining a transforming science with more social commitment”.
The new website is structured into three blocks: first, it explains what citizen science is; then, it shows the catalogue of citizen science projects developed at the UB, and the third block offers a series of learning resources to social actors to start citizen science projects.
The resources are graphic and audiovisual pills that include an introduction to citizen science, a presentation of nine existing projects through infographics and the detailed description of six ideas (co-creation, communities, tools and methods, data, ethics and inclusion and action), of this type of collaborative research. The videos are available on the website in three languages (Catalan, Spanish and English).
This UB training has been managed under the TORCH project and has been carried out in collaboration with the Catalan Third Sector Platform and the SENSE STEAM Education project. Perelló notes that “citizen science is an opportunity so that the communities and the organized citizenship find new ways to decide on actions and policies about relevant topics such as sustainability, the access to rights or the improvement of governance”.
Moreover, the rector’s delegate for Science Journals and Open Science, Ignasi Labastida, notes that “this new space will allow us to share the initiatives on citizen science beyond university and will provide resources to the research staff and the citizens who wish to participate together in a research project”.