Arenas for building relations for co-operation through citizen science
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Göteborgs universitet - Institutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 8 252 292 |
| Project duration | January 2018 - December 2021 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | Universitets och högskolors strategiska utveckling av samverkan |
| Call | Development of Societal Interaction capacity at HEIs - Full application |
Important results from the project
The ARCS project has created a Swedish national portal for citizen science (https://medborgarforskning.se). The portal will help Swedish universities to use citizen science for collaboration with the public. Researchers can use the portal to recruit volunteers to their projects, and the public can search for interesting research to participate in as active co-researchers. The portal also contains curated knowledge and important advice on how to do sustainable citizen science.
Expected long term effects
Medborgarforskning.se was launched on December 8, 2021, at Sweden’s first national conference on citizen science. Through the portal’s connection to the European counterpart, EU-Citizen.Science, Swedish researchers and the general public will have opportunities to benefit from international projects, networks and collaborations. The code that was developed for the two portals is now openly accessible on Git-Hub for other stakeholders to use and improve upon.
Approach and implementation
The portal (medborgarforskning.se) was developed through a collaborative process where the primary end user, the researcher, was actively engaged throughout the different stages. Guided by the researchers’ needs and preferences, and based upon rigorous reviews of the literature in the field, the portal’s structure and features were developed. Through close collaboration with the EU-Citizen.Science initiative, the two projects could benefit from each other’s results.