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@INPROCEEDINGS{Stoick:1026699,
      author       = {Stožická, Zuzana and Sofianos, Silvia and Habrmanová,
                      Mária and Harvát, Matej and Dobbersteinová, Jitka},
      title        = {{P}romoting and {E}ducating on {C}itizen {S}cience in the
                      {C}ontext of a {S}mall {C}entral {E}uropean {C}ountry: {T}he
                      {C}ase of {S}lovakia.},
      reportid     = {FZJ-2024-03513},
      year         = {2022},
      abstract     = {Citizen Science (CS) engages the public in scientific
                      projects, bringing benefits to both research and society.
                      Scientists gain the opportunity to collect or process larger
                      amounts of data with the help of volunteers (and also
                      cooperate with citizens in various other ways), to open a
                      social debate on their topic, to learn about the issues that
                      concern citizens the most and to increase their
                      organisational skills. CS bridges the gap between science
                      and public, increases scientific literacy and society's
                      trust in science. The growth of CS is not uniform, even
                      within Europe – while CS concept is thriving in Western
                      Europe, it is only starting to get recognized in
                      post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
                      These countries face similar challenges, they can
                      collaborate and share experience on international platforms,
                      but simultaneously they must build the foundations in their
                      specific circumstances. In Slovakia, only a few scientific
                      projects have used participatory methods so far. We surveyed
                      them and contacted their representatives. Most of the
                      projects deal with biology and environment; we found just
                      one project in social sciences. Only some of the
                      participatory projects refer to the term citizen science
                      (mostly those belonging to international cooperation). There
                      is little awareness on CS in the local academic environment
                      and in broader public. It has no representation in
                      university curricula and rarely appears in the media. This
                      may be caused by a shorter existence of civil society, low
                      support for science in general, lack of openness and the
                      language barrier. To raise awareness on CS in our country,
                      we created short introductory open course (titled Začnime
                      si s občianskou vedou – Let’s start with the citizen
                      science) on EU-Citizen.Science platform. Our course is in
                      Slovak language, because there is a lot of material on CS in
                      dominant European languages, but a minimum in Slovak. Use of
                      English as a universal language of science brings many
                      advantages, however, the academic community is now
                      re-learning to appreciate the importance of communication in
                      locally relevant languages (see e.g. the Helsinki Initiative
                      on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication). In CS,
                      communication and creation of open educational materials in
                      local language is essential, since the success of
                      participatory research requires involvement of several
                      partners with different level of scientific and language
                      skills. Our course covers brief history, definition and
                      benefits of CS, design of the project, finding partners,
                      questions of data and ethics and impact of the project. The
                      course is supplemented with video-interviews of
                      representatives of particular projects from Slovakia, to
                      increase the visibility of good practice, demonstrate to the
                      audience that CS is also useful in conditions of a small
                      country and encourage other researchers to use participatory
                      methods. We will promote the course among potential
                      stakeholders, ask for feedback and measure participation. As
                      a next step, we propose to create a national CS platform as
                      a venue for education and networking, where all potential CS
                      stakeholders will be able to find general information and
                      discover the projects that are most relevant for them to
                      join.},
      typ          = {PUB:(DE-HGF)24},
      doi          = {10.5281/ZENODO.6365967},
      url          = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1026699},
}