CROPS – Curating, Replicating, Orchestrating, and Propagating Citizen Science across Europe

In the past decade, citizen science has become a proven and accepted methodology across a wide range of scientific disciplines, able to collect new and complementary data which both enhances and adds context to existing data collection methods. By upscaling to a transnational level, citizen science could gather, analyse and exploit a vast amount of data across the European Research Area (ERA) and beyond, achieving higher impact through creating a multinational community of citizen scientists.

However, many citizen science initiatives that start at a small-scale, face technical, practical and conceptual challenges when attempting to upscale to a wider level. CROPS aims to address this issue by offering guidance and support to citizen scientific projects with growth potential.

CROPS will identify the most suitable citizen science initiatives for upscaling to the Europe-wide level, and in doing so will develop protocols, resources and examples of best practice for the upscaling of citizen science activities, helping practitioners to fully realise the potential impact of their activities towards the Horizon Europe EU Missions. This support will be tailored to all different types of citizen science initiatives, and the diverse stakeholders that are involved in the process. CROPS will also help citizen science practitioners consider inclusivity, public trust and societal impact, while being fully aware of data interoperability requirements, sustainability issues and funding approaches when upscaling their activities.  

The mission of the CROPS project is supported by the following concepts:

The Roots: Learning from best-practice of existing upscaled activities to identify potential citizen science projects suitable for upscaling to the ERA level. Experiences and knowledge from existing initiatives will be used to inform a thorough screening process to identify citizen science projects with the potential to upscale.

Growth: CROPS will support the growth of citizen science activities that have been identified as suitable for upscaling. It will do this by adapting and utilising existing tools that have been developed through previous EU and other projects and activities. Protocols and strategies relating to communication, stakeholder engagement, training resources and design will be developed as part of a user-centred process, informed at all times by existing actions and CS networks. Furthermore, CROPS will help ensure the sustainability of upscaling activities and maximise their uptake.

The Fruit: The fruit of the CROPS concept, resulting from the screening and support actions and more specifically the user-centred, multi-stakeholder approach taken, is the creation of transnational citizen science communities and societal coalitions fostering community ownership.

The CROPS Consortium brings together six partner institutions:

In CROPS, the Novel Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) research group has a significant role, leading the work on developing protocols and strategies for upscaling citizen science, ensuring the scientific relevance and legitimacy of the citizen science projects identified for upscaling; and producing guidelines for data interoperability, FAIR principles, open software, and repositories to ensure the scalability of citizen science initiatives with potential.