Sustainable institutional change in action: An Implementer's perspective - UniSR

Engaging society to better science and promote health:

How TIME4CS will help Vita-Salute San Raffaele University foster Citizen & Open Science practices:

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University is a prestigious Italian private, not-for-profit university hosting more than 5,000 students and comprises the faculties of Medicine, Psychology and Philosophy. 

The university integrates its scientific activities with research conducted by IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, a leading private research hospital in Italy performing cutting-edge translational research aiming at advancing the knowledge on human diseases and novel therapies. A shared campus hosts all teaching and research activities in a large state-of-the-art infrastructural complex. 

Both institutions have a strong commitment to open science, research integrity and public engagement: due to the ever-increasing social, economic and environmental implication of research, engaging citizens in the scientific process is therefore of great importance. Citizen Science is an excellent framework to co-create knowledge and share both results and tools with the society at large. 

San Raffaele researchers have little experience in the field, but have already been involved in interdisciplinary research projects – mostly regarding nutrition and health education – that depended on citizen participation, although not as active, independent actors in the scientific process.

Citizen Science as a framework for open science and societal engagement:

UniSR recognises citizen science as a powerful instrument for the advancement of science for several strategic reasons: 

• it helps integrate information technologies and smart devices in the development of research programs and in healthcare; 

• it confers the potential to conduct research on a larger scale, while reducing costs; 

• it addresses key ethical concerns in biomedical research, leveraging on empowerment and democratization processes; 

• It provides a unique framework for public engagement and science education.

By promoting Citizen Science approaches within the institution, UniSR hopes to advance its overall responsible research and innovation agenda. 

However, it is acknowledged that citizen science projects must overcome key technical and ethical challenges to succeed, especially so in the complex field of healthcare and biomedicine. To overcome these challenges and fully unlock the potential of citizen science, we need to provide the appropriate services and institutional context. This is the primary goal of the grounding actions we will implement within the TIME4CS project span.

 Our grounding actions:

The planned grounding actions comprise all major intervention areas, from research to education and awareness, support resources and infrastructures to policy and assessment. 

The education and awareness area is probably the most strategic, given the limited experience we have, as an institution, in citizen science activities. In this regard, we plan to join a major CS network (the European Citizen Science Association), to access expertise in the field – resources, events and workshops – as well as new opportunities for scientific collaboration. We also plan to set up a Working Group with researchers already interested in the topic and launch information initiatives for researchers and training programs directed at university students.

We hope that these actions will inspire a first group of interested researchers to join the CS working group, while the implementation of the next grounding actions – regarding the area of policy and assessment and support resources and infrastructure – will provide tools and know-how to the community at large. Indeed, UniSR is undergoing a structural transformation including the implementation of a new Area for Research Development. Within this Area we plan to set up a contact point for Citizen Science, in the open science team. Furthermore, we plan to include the use of CS approaches in the evaluation criteria for researchers. 

By providing institutional change to support Citizen Science activities, the TIME4CS Grounding Actions will, hopefully, trigger a virtuous circle and lead to the first UniSR Citizen Science research projects.

Author: Quadri Nicola