“Citizen Science”: A new paradigm is being promoted at UCM

The president of the Advisory Committee on Open and Citizen Science of Argentina, Fernanda Beigel, addressed a different way of producing scientific knowledge during a meeting organized by «Colmena UCM» project, which aims to promote access to research.

A call to academics and students to promote the paradigm of «Citizen Science», through participative and open research, formulated the Argentine sociologist Fernanda Beigel, at the Universidad Católica del Maule, UCM.

The president of the Advisory Committee on Open and Citizen Science of the trans-Andean country explained that the model —sometimes promoted by actors of the community itself —, reduces the gaps between academia and society.

«Open Science is understood only as access to data, but Participatory or Citizen Science, as a new concept, is one where the opening is towards the sectors of society that will benefit from scientific progress,» said the doctor in Political and Social Sciences, during a lecture she gave at the San Miguel campus.

«The challenge is very complex and has to do with a cultural change. Unlike Argentina, Chile did not have an open access law a decade ago. However, the measures that ANID (National Agency for Research and Development) has put in place, such as setting conditions for financing projects, gives a certain margin to make changes at an institutional level that can generate transformations at a national level,» she said.

Beigel, a reference in open science in Latin America, was the main figure in the first meeting organized by the campus on the subject, after being awarded a government initiative under the title «Colmena UCM».

«These conferences allow us to reflect on more humanizing models, where the other person’s work is effectively recognized and where the economic indicator is not the only incentive to carry out our work. There is a space of freedom, where we hope to be able to move forward,» said the Vice Rector for Research and Graduate Studies of the institution, Dr. Hernán Maureira.

According to the rector of the campus, Dr. Claudio Rojas, science should be a source of inspiration. «We have to seduce the public and the youth, so that they understand that doing science is useful and entertaining,» he said.

The «Open Science Meeting in Maule: dialogues and challenges for collaboration» was supported by the universities of Talca and Autónoma de Chile and attended by the person in charge of the Access Unit of the National Agency for Research and Development, María Soledad Bravo, and the outstanding surgeon Vivienne Bachelet.

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