A co-created citizen science project for evolution understanding, conservation and scientific literacy (CoFish)

Scientifically literate citizens are crucial for democratic societies. Governments rely on such citizens to make informed decisions in key policy areas to achieve important global goals such as the Paris Agreement on climate change or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Citizen science – the participation of non-professional scientists in research – is increasingly seen as a tool for addressing global challenges and advancing the understanding of science. Yet there is a lack of information on how Citizen Science projects should be designed and implemented to maximise their effects on science and society.

This project will develop and implement a particularly ambitious approach to Citizen Science: a co-created project. Instead of limiting the task for citizens to data collection, co-created projects involve them in every step of the research process. They integrate the perspectives and knowledge of the public in the formulation of scientific questions and methods. This values the specific knowledge relevant to the science of certain social groups that are not traditionally involved in the scientific process, and new insights are gained that can improve the social relevance of science. In this way, co-created projects provide a valuable opportunity to improve public understanding of the nature of science, thereby increasing citizens’ scientific literacy and engagement with science. Although co-creation is a key new component of Horizon Europe, there is little data on how effective such an approach can be. We plan to test the value to science and society of a citizen-co-created science project.

In this project, recreational fishermen and scientists will design and run a citizen science project on trout evolution together, forming a research partnership. The fishermen will be involved in all parts of the research process, from hypothesis generation to joint dissemination. We will use appropriate measurement tools to assess the value to both the public and the scientists themselves and to measure scientific output in terms of publications and data generated. We expect CoFish to lead to a rich co-learning experience that will improve the sustainability of trout fisheries in Switzerland and ultimately strengthen the trust between science and society.