Short abstract:

Citizen science - Widespread - grassroots innovation - open science

Long abstract:

In the context of sustainable societal and environmental transitions, citizen science (CS) has a key role to play as it contributes to the democratization of innovation. Citizen science promotes intermediation between the scientific third sector (Ottolini, 2020, Lhoste and Sardin 2024) and academic organisations (Alliss 2017, Houllier and al. 2017). We postulate that 1/ such cooperation is a robust configuration for the production of actionable knowledge 2/ methods and skills tested in previous CS experiences justify an attempt to generalise some of them 3/ CS allows the endogenous development of the network.

In this communication we discuss the results of a multi-stakeholder research project called EQUIPACT. The aim of this project is to improve the quality and societal impact of CS. The consortium consists of eight NGO’s, two public laboratories, three public research institutes, one museum and one private laboratory. Our communication addresses the question of the transformative potential of citizen science. First, we will contribute to the generalisation of the methods and skills previously developed by the partners of EQUIPACT. Second, , we will focus on brakes and levers to CS success along the scientific time (excluding : upstream / downstream). This leads us to explore datas on local interfaces (network or territorial), documentation, monitoring and evaluation tasks.