Deadline: 9-Mar-23
The European Commission (EC) is pleased to announce the Laying the Groundwork towards Europe-wide Citizen Science Campaigns.
Scope
- Citizen science, involving citizens directly in the development of new knowledge or innovations, is a rapidly emerging mode of research and innovation that can lead to increased quality and effectiveness, e.g., through collecting, processing or analysing new qualities and quantities of data.
- Many citizen science initiatives could achieve much higher impact if they were implemented on a transnational basis, collecting, analysing and exploiting vast amounts of cross-country data and, thereby, building a multinational community of citizen scientists. However, small-scale national citizen science projects often face practical, technical, or conceptual challenges and lack the support, the transnational coordination skills, and the resources, to upscale their efforts to a transnational level.
- This action should conduct preparatory work for the launch of Europe-wide citizen science campaigns under the New ERA, which will also have synergies with Horizon Europe EU Missions. The action should identify the most promising citizen science initiatives for transnational upscaling, foster the development of broad societal coalitions around the identified and promising initiatives, and propose how to unlock the necessary funding commitments (e.g., from EU and national programmes and funders, philanthropic, and/or commercial sources) required.
- Europe-wide citizen science campaigns should require the involvement of quadruple helix stakeholders. Citizen science ‘champions’ in public authorities should be envisaged, to raise awareness, ‘connect the dots’ between different services and institutions, and obtain broad and high-level commitments. The involvement of SMEs and industry could lead to new means to organise, collect and analyse data, and disseminate and exploit results. The involvement of research stakeholders will be essential to ensuring rigorous and credible research approaches and maximising scientific and technological impacts. Obtaining the inputs of civil society, involving and making youth aware of CS, building understanding of the activities (including their scientific bases), and fostering broad societal ownership of the promising initiatives could prove crucial to the scale and intensity of the eventual citizen science campaigns.
- The action should conduct a thorough screening of potential initiatives to be upscaled, analysing the most promising in terms of synergies with one or more Horizon Europe EU Missions, the potential to advance scientific knowledge, and generation of a range of additional benefits. The action should develop scientific protocols, establish working modalities with open data repositories and infrastructures, prepare training.
- The action will build on the existing knowledge base and experience, including previous projects focused on citizen science, citizen engagement activities in the context of Horizon Europe EU Missions, citizen observatories, and the upscaling of the Plastic Pirates – Go Europe!
Funding Information
- The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- Public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- Cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Eligible Activities
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Eligible activities are the ones described in the call conditions. Applications will only be considered eligible if their content corresponds, wholly or in part, to the topic description for which it is submitted. Projects must focus exclusively on civil applications and must not:
- Aim at human cloning for reproductive purposes;
- Intend to modify the genetic heritage of human beings which could make such changes heritable (except for research relating to cancer treatment of the gonads, which may be financed);
- Intend to create human embryos solely for the purpose of research, or for the purpose of stem cell procurement, including by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer.
- Projects must, moreover, comply with EU policy interests and priorities (environment, social, security, industrial policy, etc.)
Expected Outcomes
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Projects are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:
- Identification of citizen science initiatives with high potential impact if upscaled to ERA level;
- Establishment of broad societal coalitions/networks of quadruple helix actors organised around promising citizen science initiatives;
- Protocols and working modalities for use of open transnational data repositories and infrastructures;
- Proposals and commitments for mobilising diverse sources of funding to ensure sustainability of citizen science initiatives.
- These targeted outcomes in turn contribute to medium and long-term impacts:
- Increased collaboration with all stakeholders, including citizens in all phases of research and innovation, leading to more responsible R&I;
- Increased alignment of ERA countries’ citizen science efforts;
- Transnational citizen science community building;
- Contributions to the objectives of Horizon Europe’s EU Missions;
- Increased public trust in, and understanding of, science.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
- Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register before submitting their application, in order to get a participant identification code (PIC) and be validated by the Central Validation Service before signing the grant agreement. For the validation, they will be asked to upload the necessary documents showing their legal status and origin during the grant preparation stage. A validated PIC is not a prerequisite for submitting an application.
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Specific cases:
- Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding. Associated partners
- Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions. Entities without legal personality
- Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons. EU bodies
- Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
For more information, visit European Commission.