Citizen Science Network Austria
The Citizen Science Network Austria (CSNA, ) has been pursuing four goals since 2014: 1. connecting all citizen science practitioners in Austria, regardless of their institutional background. 2. further development of citizen science on many levels (e.g. scientific, ethical, communication, collaboration). 3. quality management in order to keep the citizen science projects in Austria at the high level of the jointly developed quality criteria. 4. promotion of citizen science in the general public so that all people living in Austria know that they have the possibility to actively participate in scientific projects.
Since 2014, the citizen science community in Austria has become more diverse in terms of scientific disciplines, institutions and collaborations. Universities, museums, public authorities, non-governmental organizations, citizen scientists and funders work together in the network ().
The network was started by a team of PhD students without official mandate or funding. The network has been institutionalised by BOKU University, and since 2019, the network has been receiving long-term funding from the University, which enables strategic and sustainable work. This distinguishes the CSNA from other national and international citizen science networks worldwide.
CSNA is already perceived as a role model by some countries and takes a leading role in cooperation with similar networks at European level, e.g. leading a working group on European cooperation in the European Citizen Science Association (see: ). In addition, the online platform of the network can be set up in a similar way in other countries. For example, Switzerland uses the same structure and technical framework for its national platform ().
Through cooperation in the network, citizen science in Austria has become an important topic in higher education, media and policy. There are almost daily reports in the media about citizen science, several universities have installed contact points for citizen science, and a growing number of funding organisations explicitly mention citizen science in their programmes. There is active participation: more than 175,000 citizen scientists are now active in Austrian projects. The annual Austrian Citizen Science Conference is attended by about 200 participants with diverse personal and professional backgrounds. Numerous collaborations have emerged from the network, and since 2015 the Conference has been hosted by another partner organization every year.
In terms of quality management, the CSNA takes a pioneering role in the international citizen science community. All projects in the network must meet 20 criteria, including that all results and data must be made openly available to ensure maximum transparency for the public (see: ). Nine working groups address topics such as open science tools, legal aspects, open biodiversity data or cooperation with schools ().
Contributed by Florian Heigl, BOKU University, Vienna, Austria.
Citizen Science Network Austria