1 Participatory Policymaking in Citizen Science: Insights from Finland Elena Svahn & Jonni Karlsson OSFair 2025 September 16th CERN Geneva
Introduction ●Motivation ○Focus: Shift of open science coordination in Finland from the Ministry of Education and Culture to the research community (Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, TSV) ●Research focus: ○Policy formulation with stakeholder involvement ○Impact of stakeholder engagement on policy adaptation ●Publications: ○Insights into Participatory Policymaking –Citizen Science Policy Development in Finland (under review NOPOS https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nopos ) ■Approach: Analysis of TSV Citizen Science Working Group documents (meeting notes, surveys, policy paper) ○Stakeholder Engagement and the Adaptation of Citizen Science Policy in Finnish Research Organisations (draft) ■Approach: Approach: Mixed-methods with national monitoring data and two survey rounds (RPOs, researchers, citizen scientists, funders), using a repeated cross-sectional pre–post design to track population-level changes before and after policy introduction ●Data Sources: ○2 national surveys (2021 & 2024) → archived at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive https://www.fsd.tuni.fi/en/ ○Monitoring Results (Citizen Science Indicators) in the National Open Science Monitoring 2024 ○Grey literature: Meeting minutes, steering committee feedback, comment round feedback 17 april 2025 2
Participatory development process ●Stakeholders were engaged in multiple phases of the development process ○Citizen science working group 2019-2022 ○Stakeholder survey questionnaire with 152 respondents in March & April 2021 ○Public round of comments January –February 2022 (21 comments from 9 organisations) ○National Coordination steering group review March 2022 ○Recommendation for Citizen Science published April 2022 ○Further developments: How to Become A Citizen Scientist: A Beginner’s Guide (2024), Citizen science indicators in the 2024 National OS monitoring 17 april 2025 3
Stakeholder survey questionnaire ●The survey was carried out in February 2021 and targeted researchers, research organisations, citizen scientists, and local research funders (152 respondents) ●The survey results highlight several gaps in the integration and support of citizen science within research organisations. ○85% of researchers indicated the absence of formal guidelines or policies for citizen science projects ○70% of researchers noted a lack of available support or training for such initiatives. ○45% of researchers responded that their organisation did not have any ongoing citizen science projects. ○86% of respondents reported that citizen science is only sporadically or not at all visible in funding projects, and ○40% were unaware of what citizen science entails. 17 april 2025 4
Open Science Policy in Nordic & Baltic Context ●Implementation of citizen science, that is included under the open science (OS) spectre, has progressed at a different pace in the Nordic and Baltic countries. ○Norway, Finland, Sweden and Latvia have national citizen science policies (EOSC observatory, 2022 data) ●Finland: strong focus on policy production via Declaration for Open Science (2020–2025). ○Coordination led by Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV). ●“Nordic model” of OS policy development: shared responsibility between ministries and expert organisations. ●“Baltic model”: ministries play a more central role. Hansson, E.-L., Bukauskas, L., Garavelli, S., Gunnarsdóttir, B., Hammargren, P.-O., Rosti, T., Hienola, A., Iozzi, M. F., Morthorst-Jensen, D. A. M., Christiansen, E., Rauste, P., Slaidins, I., & Vellemaa, T. (2022). D2.8: Open Science policies and resource provisioning in the Nordic and Baltic countries (final report). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6503709
Further developments ●The stakeholder survey questionnaire was repeated in May-June 2024 with emphasis on the impact of the recommendation (178 respondents, main increase with private individuals/citizen scientists) ●Analysis between the survey results between 2021 and 2024 compared to the data from national OS monitoring 2024 suggest a slight increase in policy visibility and awareness while actual implementation remains uneven ○majority of RPO’s in Finland (62%) had not utilized the Recommendation for Citizen Science (2022) based on the survey ○notable rise in mobile app usage between 2021 and 2024 ○most visible impact with national monitoring indicators (19% national increase with guiding documents for CS) ●Next worthwhile comparisons and frameworks: ○EOSC observatory (still in process) ○White Paper Citizen Science Strategy 2030 for Germany (also done by a participatory process) 17 april 2025 6
What We Learned: Participatory Policy in Citizen Science ●Driving question ○How do participatory approaches impact policy development and adaptation, particularly for citizen science in Finland? ●Takeaways ○Participatory policymaking can make policies more responsive and foster institutional adaptation and better fit, but inclusivity, capacity-building, and continuous evaluation are essential for systemic change. ○National monitoring frameworks not only provide data for evaluation but also act as motivators, encouraging organisations to adapt their practices in line with policy goals.
Thank you! Danke! Grazie! Merci! Links: ●Recommendation for citizen science (2022)https://edition.fi/tsv/catalog/book/445 ●How to Become a Citizen Scientist: A Beginner’s Guide (2024) https://zenodo.org/records/14025248 ●National OS Monitoring Results 2024 (2024) at research.fi ●openscience.fi Contact: ●Jonni Karlsson (TSV)
[email protected], openscience.fi ●Elena Svahn (ÅA)
[email protected]