Citizen Science Beyond Participation
Citizen science has often been celebrated as a way to democratise science by involving citizens in research processes. Yet participation can take many forms. In some projects, citizens contribute observations or data while researchers retain control over research design, analysis, and decision-making. In others, participants play a much more active role in shaping research agendas and interpreting results.
The paper argues that genuine openness requires more than simply inviting citizens to contribute. It requires addressing questions of power, representation, and whose knowledge is considered valuable. This becomes particularly important when working with children, who are often viewed as learners rather than legitimate knowledge producers.
The authors draw on the concept of epistemic justice, the idea that different forms of knowledge deserve recognition and credibility, to examine how school-based citizen science can challenge traditional boundaries between experts and non-experts.
The InChildHealth Project: Schools as Knowledge Spaces
The study is based on the European research project InChildHealth, which investigates indoor air quality (IAQ) and its impacts on children’s health across seven European cities: Athens, Barcelona, Colchester, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Vienna.
Rather than implementing a single standardised model of participation, the project adopted flexible approaches tailored to local school contexts. Activities included:
- Interactive learning sessions on indoor air quality
- Classroom walkthroughs and environmental assessments
- Sensor-based monitoring and bioaerosol sampling
- Workshops where pupils formulated research questions
- Data analysis and interpretation activities
- Co-creation of interventions aimed at improving indoor air quality in schools.
Importantly, citizen science was not treated as a supplementary outreach activity but as an integrated component of the research process itself.
From Contributors to Co-Researchers
One of the most compelling findings presented in Valencia was that participation exists on a spectrum. While some activities remained largely contributory, others enabled pupils to become active co-researchers.
The authors identify three key dimensions through which co-production emerged.
1. Reconfiguring Roles and Relationships
The project challenged traditional educational and scientific hierarchies. Researchers adapted their methods and communication styles to engage meaningfully with young participants. Teachers became co-designers and facilitators rather than merely hosts of research activities. Pupils increasingly assumed active roles in investigating questions that affected their everyday environments.
These experiences demonstrate that meaningful participation is not simply a matter of inviting involvement; it depends on building trust, dialogue, and sustained relationships.
2. Valuing Experiential Knowledge
Children brought unique insights into the conditions of their classrooms and daily routines. Their observations about ventilation habits, comfort levels, and classroom practices often complemented and enriched sensor-based measurements.
The findings highlight an important lesson for citizen science: quantitative data alone cannot fully capture lived realities. By recognising children’s experiences as valid and valuable forms of knowledge, the project fostered greater engagement and confidence among participants.
3. Connecting Knowledge to Action
In several schools, research activities sparked discussions about practical improvements to indoor air quality. While pupils did not directly control infrastructure decisions, they became advocates for change and participants in conversations about healthier learning environments.
Teachers reported increased awareness of indoor air quality issues and greater willingness to address them within their schools. This demonstrates how citizen science can contribute not only to knowledge generation but also to institutional learning and behavioural change.
The Limits of Participation
While the presentation highlighted many positive outcomes, it also offered a critical reflection on the challenges facing participatory science.
Schools operate under significant constraints, including limited time, curriculum requirements, administrative pressures, and regulatory obligations. Ethical procedures, consent processes, and data protection requirements, although essential, can create additional barriers to participation.
The researchers also identified evaluation as a major challenge. Traditional research assessment frameworks tend to prioritise measurable outputs and performance indicators. Yet many of the most valuable outcomes of co-production, such as empowerment, trust-building, collective learning, and changing relationships, are difficult to quantify.
This raises broader questions about how science and innovation systems assess success and whether existing evaluation frameworks adequately capture the value of participatory approaches.
Governance Matters
A particularly important contribution of the paper lies in its focus on governance.
The InChildHealth experience suggests that even successful participatory projects often remain temporary spaces of experimentation. Sustaining these practices beyond the lifespan of individual projects requires support from educational institutions, funding bodies, and policy frameworks.
Without structural alignment, citizen science risks becoming episodic rather than transformative.
The authors therefore call for greater attention to the institutional conditions that enable long-term co-production, arguing that openness must be accompanied by supportive governance structures if participatory science is to realise its democratic ambitions.
Rethinking Science Futures
The presentation resonated strongly with the overarching theme of the EU-SPRI 2026 conference: questioning the contributions of science and innovation to society.
Rather than treating citizens as passive recipients of scientific knowledge, the InChildHealth project demonstrates the potential of more collaborative and relational approaches to research. At the same time, it reminds us that participation alone does not guarantee inclusion, empowerment, or justice.
The path from contribution to co-production requires careful attention to power relations, institutional constraints, and the recognition of diverse forms of knowledge. As science and innovation systems seek greater societal relevance and legitimacy, these questions will remain central to shaping more democratic and equitable futures for research.
The discussion in Valencia made one thing clear: opening science is not simply about access. It is about transforming relationships between knowledge, institutions, and society.
