Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COALESCE (Coordinated Opportunities for Advanced Leadership and Engagement in Science Communication in Europe)
Período documentado: 2024-04-01 hasta 2025-09-30
The COALESCE project set course to build the future European Competence Centre for Science Communication as an international reference for the practice, research, and training of science communication. The Competence Centre will be a virtual platform connected to a network of COALESCE hubs, as physical national hubs throughout Europe. A community-driven and collaborative approach will establish a road to develop, consolidate, and mainstream generated knowledge and connections within science communication and its multiple stakeholders that can lead to a sustainable structure. Facing societal challenges related to health, climate emergency, water scarcity, AI, and misinformation that attempt to endanger our democracies, COALESCE project’s main objectives are: ensuring the effectiveness of and best practices for science communication and demonstrating the means for rapid mobilisation of science communication in times of crisis, whilst fighting misinformation and engendering trust in science. Policy actions will be driven to encourage long term and structural investment in science communication and its professionalisation at the EU, national, and institutional levels.
The first version of the virtual platform for the European Competence Centre for Science Communication is https://scicommcentre.eu/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana) and will continue to improve along the project lifetime. The vision for the Competence Centre is to become the main reference platform for science communication daily practice, providing access to quality-curated resources and library, certified training, networking and collaboration opportunities. Find project resources at https://zenodo.org/communities/coalesce_science_communication/records?q=&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=newest(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
The first version of the virtual platform for the European Competence Centre for Science Communication is https://scicommcentre.eu/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana) and will continue to improve along the project lifetime. The vision for the Competence Centre is to become the main reference platform for science communication daily practice, providing access to quality-curated resources and library, certified training, networking and collaboration opportunities. Find project resources at https://zenodo.org/communities/coalesce_science_communication/records?q=&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=newest(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
-Co-design a self-sustaining EU Competence Centre for scicomm as a virtual platform: COALESCE set up a co-design and co-development working framework, as an iterative and agile process based on end users-producers feedback, to be applied in three release stages of the virtual platform and following on previous COS4CLOUD, PARCOS, and ECS projects results. Several consultations and co-creation activities with multiple stakeholders, including policymakers, civil society, scicomm professionals, journalists, researchers, and industry, were performed to understand their needs and expectations for the Competence Centre. We converted these into functional requirements for the platform, to include a scicomm innovation cycle, a roadmap for rapid mobilisation in times of crisis and principles, and standards and criteria for quality scicomm resources. Cross-project collaborations with ongoing projects, such as the ECS, PATTERN, REINFORCING, and Skills4EOSC allow mutual learning on methodologies, resources and/or functionalities to foster connection of complementary services, methodologies, and future sustainability.
-Transform the knowledge consolidated from SwafS-19, H2020, HE, and national scicomm projects into valuable resources and tools for the Competence Centre through co-creation processes: The transformation of knowledge consolidated in scicomm projects is an ongoing process throughout the project’s lifetime using the COALESCE SciComm Innovation cycle, launched in the first platform release. The cycle is applied and further validated within the project itself, to identify the needs of different target audiences and co-produce new resources that are usable in different contexts and for different purposes. In parallel, advances have been made to define the virtual platform metadata for the database (currently 100 resources), which will be continuously updated to feed multiple tools and resources developed under the project.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE network of N&R hubs as the physical venues for developing the participatory activities and exploiting the COALESCE resources beyond the scope of the project: The Competence Centre will operate under a virtual platform connected to a network of 20 national and regional hubs established outside the consortium, in the EU27 + the UK and Ukraine. A yearly period of expressions of interest will be announced. So far, 10 organisations from Portugal, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia have been enrolled, in addition to the 12 partner organisations within an additional 8 countries. Mutual learning and exploitation meetings took place to learn from other national and EU level successful cases.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE Communities of knowledge and practice (CoP): The COALESCE CoP, currently with +1400 members, was established building on previous SwafS-19 CoPs, including quadruple helix stakeholders, scicommers, and journalists, following an activities plan in connection with a communication and dissemination plan. So far, more than 1700 people have been involved in more than 50 participatory activities and pilot training. This created opportunities to increase networking, capacity building and mutual learning for responsible, trustworthy, and rapidly mobilised scicomm.
-Actively involve scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, scientific and journalist networks, and University Alliances (UA): COALESCE continues to involve and expand its external stakeholder panel composed so far by 12 scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, 6 scientific and 5 journalist networks, 6 UA, 14 science policy organisations, and 11 EU projects. These will further participate in activities and events to co-create and validate resources, support mainstreaming excellent scicomm in the ERA, encourage institutional changes to recognise scicomm practices within academia, and produce policy recommendations for long-term impact.
-Transform the knowledge consolidated from SwafS-19, H2020, HE, and national scicomm projects into valuable resources and tools for the Competence Centre through co-creation processes: The transformation of knowledge consolidated in scicomm projects is an ongoing process throughout the project’s lifetime using the COALESCE SciComm Innovation cycle, launched in the first platform release. The cycle is applied and further validated within the project itself, to identify the needs of different target audiences and co-produce new resources that are usable in different contexts and for different purposes. In parallel, advances have been made to define the virtual platform metadata for the database (currently 100 resources), which will be continuously updated to feed multiple tools and resources developed under the project.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE network of N&R hubs as the physical venues for developing the participatory activities and exploiting the COALESCE resources beyond the scope of the project: The Competence Centre will operate under a virtual platform connected to a network of 20 national and regional hubs established outside the consortium, in the EU27 + the UK and Ukraine. A yearly period of expressions of interest will be announced. So far, 10 organisations from Portugal, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia have been enrolled, in addition to the 12 partner organisations within an additional 8 countries. Mutual learning and exploitation meetings took place to learn from other national and EU level successful cases.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE Communities of knowledge and practice (CoP): The COALESCE CoP, currently with +1400 members, was established building on previous SwafS-19 CoPs, including quadruple helix stakeholders, scicommers, and journalists, following an activities plan in connection with a communication and dissemination plan. So far, more than 1700 people have been involved in more than 50 participatory activities and pilot training. This created opportunities to increase networking, capacity building and mutual learning for responsible, trustworthy, and rapidly mobilised scicomm.
-Actively involve scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, scientific and journalist networks, and University Alliances (UA): COALESCE continues to involve and expand its external stakeholder panel composed so far by 12 scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, 6 scientific and 5 journalist networks, 6 UA, 14 science policy organisations, and 11 EU projects. These will further participate in activities and events to co-create and validate resources, support mainstreaming excellent scicomm in the ERA, encourage institutional changes to recognise scicomm practices within academia, and produce policy recommendations for long-term impact.
In terms of social impact, COALESCE is building an interconnected CoP with already more than 1400 members. Ten N&R Hubs were enrolled, with special attention to inclusion, diversity, geographical representation and languages. Efforts in the future will be intensified to guarantee equitable and active citizen engagement for better alignment with societal values. Supporting the increase of public trust in science will be pursued by building trust in institutions and delivering trustworthy scicomm. For this, several stakeholder groups are contributing in the co-creation of crisis mapping and curating mechanisms for rapid mobilisation in times of crisis, where grassroots and citizen science are becoming valuable resources.