Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COALESCE (Coordinated Opportunities for Advanced Leadership and Engagement in Science Communication in Europe)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-03-31
The COALESCE project has 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 established as a virtual platform connected to a network of physical national and regional 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.
-Co-design a self-sustaining EU Competence Centre for scicomm as a virtual platform: COALESCE has 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 the 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. These were converted into functional requirements to be applied in the platform, which will include a scicomm innovation cycle, a roadmap for rapid mobilisation in times of crisis and a set of criteria of excellence for scicomm. Cross-project collaborations with ongoing projects, such as the ECS, PATTERN, REINFORCING, and Skills4EOSC will 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 will be an ongoing process throughout the project’s lifetime by applying the COALESCE SciComm Innovation cycle, ready to be launched in the first platform release. The cycle is being applied and further validated within the project itself, to identify the needs of the 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 to be 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 to be established outside the consortium, in the EU27 + the UK and Ukraine. A yearly period of expressions of interest will be announced. For the first year, 5 organisations from Portugal, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Turkey have been enrolled. They constitute, together with the 8 countries of the consortium’s partner organisations, the first cohort of hubs. An internal document sets criteria for enrollment, management, and communication. Moreover, 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 600 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 300 people have been involved in more than 20 co-creation activities. This has further created opportunities to increase networking and mutual learning for excellent, trustworthy, and rapidly mobilised scicomm.
-Actively involve scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, scientific and journalist networks, and University Alliances (UA): COALESCE has continued to involve and expand its external stakeholder panel composed so far by 9 scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, 5 scientific and 5 journalist networks, 4 UA, 5 science policy organisations, and 7 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 will be an ongoing process throughout the project’s lifetime by applying the COALESCE SciComm Innovation cycle, ready to be launched in the first platform release. The cycle is being applied and further validated within the project itself, to identify the needs of the 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 to be 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 to be established outside the consortium, in the EU27 + the UK and Ukraine. A yearly period of expressions of interest will be announced. For the first year, 5 organisations from Portugal, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Turkey have been enrolled. They constitute, together with the 8 countries of the consortium’s partner organisations, the first cohort of hubs. An internal document sets criteria for enrollment, management, and communication. Moreover, 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 600 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 300 people have been involved in more than 20 co-creation activities. This has further created opportunities to increase networking and mutual learning for excellent, trustworthy, and rapidly mobilised scicomm.
-Actively involve scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, scientific and journalist networks, and University Alliances (UA): COALESCE has continued to involve and expand its external stakeholder panel composed so far by 9 scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, 5 scientific and 5 journalist networks, 4 UA, 5 science policy organisations, and 7 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 600 members. Five N&R Hubs were enrolled, especially paying 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.