The platforms aim at providing citizens with a participatory science-based tool that can help them distinguish science-based statements and hoaxes about gender and/or education. The egalitarian dialogue on which they are based helps overcome the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up approaches to citizen engagement in science. On the one hand, top-down approaches imply that researchers decide on their own what kind of evidence citizens need. On the other hand, promoting bottom-up actions that do not consider the scientific evidence might lead to populism. Citizen engagement needs to be tackled through co-creation, in which scientists provide scientific evidence of social impact and citizens provide their own perspectives and experiences.
The platforms contain these categories: Scientific evidence, Hoax, Needs more evidence, Scientific controversy, and Under review. Depending on the number of scientific evidence provided to support different statements, the posts will be categorized into one of the 5 categories. To be categorized as Scientific evidence, a post needs to include at least 3 scientific articles published in journals indexed in JCR or Scopus.
Addressing target audiences and expressing needs
- To raise awareness and possibly influence policy
- Collaboration
These platforms are open, available and free for anyone to use them. We want citizens, policymakers, researchers, funding institutions, civil society organizations, etc. to contribute to the platforms with their experiences, their questions, concerns, findings, and reflections. The ultimate goal is for all citizens, especially the most vulnerable ones, to be able to know whether a topic on gender or education of their interest is based on scientific evidence or not.
- EU and Member State Policy-makers
- International Organisations (ex. OECD, FAO, UN, etc.)
- Academia/ Universities
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
Currently, the platforms specifically deal with issues related to gender and education, on which hoaxes are still abundant and, therefore, it is especially important for citizens to distinguish scientific evidence from hoaxes in these two fields. However, the same co-creation basis and procedure of the platform could be replicated in fields such as medicine, poverty, climate change, and many other topics that are relevant for society.
The platforms are open, free and participatory, they do not rely on funding to be able to function and for citizens to use them. Through the feedback of different citizens, improvements are being made and will continue to be made to the platforms, in order to ensure the best functioning and their use and sustainability over time.
