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Short Abstract

Spain is increasingly incorporating CS into universities, driven by policies and grounded in decades of initiatives. Ibercivis’ experience in promoting and developing CS shows how it can become a structural part of research at universities –excellent, sustainable, and linked to social development.

Abstract

In recent years, Spain has witnessed a significant institutional drive to integrate Citizen Science (CS) into the university system. This process is largely shaped by a legislative and evaluative context transformed by the Organic Law of the University System (2023), the Science, Technology, and Innovation Act (2022), and the revised evaluation criteria of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (2023), which explicitly recognize CS as a dimension of open science and societal impact. This framework provides a strong incentive for faculty to incorporate CS into their academic activities, promoting collaborative, interdisciplinary training and new evaluation models. Simultaneously, this situation illustrates the bidirectional influence between CS and policy: regulatory support builds on robust pre-existing CS initiatives in Spain.

Since its inception in 2006, the Ibercivis Foundation has played a key role in the development of CS in Spain. In meetings promoted together with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (e.g., within RIECS-Concept, 2025) and initiatives such as the creation of the CS and Universities Steering Group (2022), or two different plans for strengthening CS in Spain (from 2017 to 2019), among others, Ibercivis has gathered many hundreds of representatives from universities, research centres, public administrations, the third sector and private actors, laying the foundations for the best development of CS in Spain, particularly regarding CS training.

Building on this experience, Ibercivis is advancing a Framework Program for Citizen Science Training for the Spanish university system, aimed at equipping the academic community with open and participatory research practices. This strategy seeks to establish networks of trainers and shared resources, consolidating CS as a structural and sustainable component of teaching, research, and academic evaluation, while fostering long-term collaboration between universities and the whole society.

As an Ibercivis member involved in these processes, I can contribute my/our experience.