Co-designing the Future of Citizen Science: Insights from the RIECS-Concept Workshop
📢 On 13 April 2026, leaders from across the citizen science ecosystem came together for an online co-design workshop dedicated to shaping the future of Europe’s research infrastructure for citizen science.
✳️ Convened by Ibercivis within the RIECS-Concept project, the event marked an important step toward aligning diverse networks around a shared vision.
The Breadth of Participation
✳️ What made this workshop particularly significant was the breadth of participation. Representatives from 12 citizen science networks – spanning national, European, and global levels joined the discussion.
📌 Among them were key contributors such as:
⚫ Maite Pelacho (Spain Citizen Science Observatory).
⚫ Karen Soacha-Godoy (RICAP / Ibero-America).
⚫ Andrea Sforzi (Italy).
⚫Fabienne Wehrle (Mitforschen!, Germany).
⚫Florian Heigl (Austria).
⚫ Franziska Stressmann (ECSA).
⚫ Gintarė Gulevičiūtė (Lithuania).
The Discussion
✳️ The discussion also included international voices such as:
⚫ Jennifer Shirk (AAPS, USA).
⚫ Katya Pérez Guzmán and François Grey (CSGP).
⚫ Maria Rosa Mondardini and Priya Mohanty (CSZ).
⚫ Natalia Ghilardi-Lopes (Brazil) and Tizian Zumthurn (Switzerland), reflecting the global relevance of the initiative.
✨Together, these networks represent over 1,000 organisations and hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists, bringing both strategic perspective and practical experience into the conversation ✨
📍 As Fermín Serrano noted during the workshop:
“It has been truly exciting to bring together these important citizen science networks… and to witness their openness and commitment to help shape the future of RIECS-Concept.”
✳️ This collaborative spirit was evident throughout the session, with participants actively engaging in discussions, sharing insights, and aligning on priorities.
A Central Message
✳️ A central message quickly emerged: the future RIECS-Concept infrastructure should not attempt to replace existing initiatives, but rather connect and strengthen them. Participants repeatedly emphasised that the current landscape, while rich and diverse, suffers from fragmentation and limited interoperability, which constrains collaboration and impact.
✳️ At the same time, discussions highlighted deeper systemic concerns. Sustainability remains a pressing issue, particularly regarding long-term funding and maintenance beyond project cycles. Governance also surfaced as a complex challenge in a distributed ecosystem with diverse stakeholders, alongside limited support capacity for scaling citizen science initiatives.
✳️ Rather than stopping at problem identification, the workshop focused strongly on solutions. Participants outlined a set of key functionalities that RIECS-Concept should provide, including modular reusable components, open APIs for integration, FAIR-compliant repositories, collaborative digital spaces, validation tools, and long-term hosting solutions.
✨ These priorities converge into a broader vision:
RIECS-Concept as a modular, federated, and community-led infrastructure. This approach would allow existing networks to maintain autonomy while becoming more interconnected, combining technical, community, and strategic functions into a coherent system.
Looking Ahead
✳️ Looking ahead, the insights gathered during the workshop will directly inform the next phase of RIECS-Concept development, including refining the infrastructure model and continuing stakeholder engagement.
✨ Ultimately, the workshop reinforced a key principle: building effective research infrastructure for citizen science requires co-design at its core. By working collaboratively with the networks it aims to support, RIECS-Concept is positioning itself as an enabling framework for a more connected, resilient, and impactful citizen science ecosystem ✨
Published 2026-04-22