TIME4CS

Context

Public engagement - in all its forms and applications, including Citizen Science - has a strong structural, transformative power at various levels of research and innovation processes. It incorporates a variety of viewpoints into problem formulation and research questions - including gender perspectives - whilst taking into account moral or ethics societal concerns.

About the project

TIME4CS aimed at facilitating a way in which the scientific ecosystem could better take societal views into consideration by supporting Research Performing Organisations - i.e. research entities such as universities and research centres - in defining and implementing institutional changes that can lead to a better and more effective engagement of citizens in research and innovation. Those institutional changes inside RPOs entailed transformation of their governance systems by taking into account both the social - mindset of people inside the organisation – and the organisational - norms, protocols, procedures, policy - aspects of RPOs. To facilitate this process, TIME4CS had identified four Intervention Areas that alone or combined can stimulate the institutional changes necessary to promote public engagement in R&I activities:

• Research;
• Education and Awareness;
• Support resources and Infrastructure;
• Policy and Assessment.

For each Intervention Area, a set of Grounding Actions (GA) was defined. The Grounding Actions are to be considered as seeds to be sown, paving the way to Institutional Changes within research institutions. TIME4CS built on the close collaboration between Front-Runners - RPOs with a comprehensive expertise in Citizen Science and that have already undergone Institutional Changes and Implementers - beneficiaries still in the early stage of the institutional adoption and/or maintenance of Citizen Science in their organisations.

Citizen Science Zurich supported the project in its role as Front-Runner with its expertise and knowledge.