Valorise
After two or three years of initial financing, your project is just starting to get up to speed, but then you submit your final report and the money tap closes. What now? How can you ensure that the community of citizen scientists that you have carefully built is not left out in the cold?
Continuing the project
- Look at the funding options on our funding page.
- Consider integrating your citizen science approach into regular research funding channels such as FWO, VLAIO and BELSPO.
- If your project provides policy-relevant data; convince the government to provide permanent support for your project and/or embed it in existing programs.
- Look for organizations with similar goals as your citizen science project that want to invest in your project to continue and/or support it.
- See if you can commercialize your citizen science project and participate in a start-up accelerator (e.g. Startit@KBC or Climate Launchpad).
- Convince your own institute or organization of the outreach potential of your project and the positive image that this entails, so that your institution wants to invest to keep your project alive.
Valorise your project
- Educational: look for an educational organisation that can further disseminate your project to young people and schools (e.g. Brightlab, Techniek- en Wetenschapsacademie or JCW). Post your educational packages for teachers on KlasCement.
- Scientific: try to publish scientifically about your project, put your collected data online in an open format and with an open license so that others can use it.
- Policy: if your project gathered policy-relevant data, make sure that the correct government agencies are aware of your results. Share your data with them in an open format and provide sufficient metadata about how this data was collected (measurement design, sensor types, quality controls...).
- Make sure that your method, approach and results are described online so that others can continue your project, learn from the lessons or use the results.
Reading tips
Gabriele Gadermaier, Daniel Dörler ea. Peer-reviewed publishing of results from citizen science projects. (in: JCOM - Journal of Science Communication, September 2018)
Didn't find the information you were looking for? Or is an important source missing?
Email us!