Alleva, Enrico

Macrì, Simone

Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità

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Ann Ist Super Sanità 2018 | Vol. 54, No. 1: 4-5
DOI: 10.4415/ANN_18_01_02
Editorial
From dissemination to Citizen Science
Enrico Alleva and Simone Macrì
Centro di Riferimento per le Scienze Comportamentali e la Salute Mentale, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 
Rome, Italy
Since the early 1980s, the European Union (now Euro-
pean Commission) launched several funding initiatives, 
Framework Programmes (FP) 1 through 7 and now Hori-
zon 2020, aimed at fostering scientific cooperation across 
the European Research Area. Our generations (EA was 
born in 1953 and SM in 1976), albeit in different times 
and modalities, resolutely believed that scientific activi-
ties shall represent the natural companion of the Europe-
an Commission when it comes to generating knowledge 
and professional opportunities (http://scienzaesocieta.
gruppi.ilcannocchiale.it/?t=post&pid=1825779). It is 
thus worth emphasizing the importance of conducting 
research in an Institution traditionally active in calibrat-
ing the needs of the subsequent FPs. For example, Amil-
care Carpi de Resmini, who then became the Director of 
the Laboratory of Organ and System Pathophysiology of 
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Insti-
tute of Health, ISS), actively contributed to the shaping 
and general formatting of the first FP, the official starting 
of European science, back in 1983. 
Upon launching FP1, the European Commission 
strived to integrate those countries that were scarcely 
represented in science in order to favour a wide dis-
semination and sharing of resources. The inclusive na-
ture of these funding initiatives, originally pertaining to 
resource-sharing among scientists, has taken a different 
form when decision makers realised that science shall 
be widely disseminated rather than being exclusively en-
trained within the specialist scientific community. Spe-
cifically, notwithstanding the steady increase in available 
funds between FP2 through FP4 (1987-1998), and at 
variance with North America (particularly US), science 
was still perceived by the lay public (taxpayers) as distant 
from daily lives and expectations. Science was seen as 
something produced and conducted by “wizard alche-
mists” and only intelligible to those inhabiting an “Ivory 
tower”. Thus, the subsequent FPs explicitly devoted 
considerable resources to guarantee that science be dis-
seminated to the general public in a rapid, efficient and 
intelligible fashion. The simplest dissemination practice 
has taken the form of thematic websites in which funded 
projects’ leaders were requested to describe the goals, 
methodologies and general impact of their scientific 
endeavours (e.g. http://matrics-project.eu; http://www.
h2020awe.eu; http://www.heals-eu.eu). Such continuing 
effort towards increasing science transparency, availabil-
ity and dissemination to the European citizenship was a 
pleasant and very welcome responsibility. 
Horizon 2020 programme, the present and future 
of European research, is now taking laymen involve-
ment in science a step beyond: Citizen Science, herein 
defined as an effort to extend the role of the general 
public through a transition from passive recipients of 
knowledge to active participants in data collection and 
generation of knowledge. In the Oxford English Diction-
ary, Citizen Science is defined as “scientific work un-
dertaken by members of the general public, often in 
collaboration with or under the direction of professional 
scientists and scientific institutions”. Numerous scien-
tists have exploited this involvement when it came to 
collect vast amounts of data without the need to resort 
to a specific education in a given scientific field. This 
approach was adopted in several studies ranging from 
astronomy (http://www.citizensky.org/), to ornithology 
(http://www.birdcam.it), and environmental monitor-
ing [1] (http://engineering.nyu.edu/news/2012/10/15/
brooklyn-atlantis-robot-captures-life-litter-gowanus-
help-citizen-scientists). The general public has been in-
volved also in studies in which laymen simply offered 
computational capacity through their home computers 
[2]. Recent efforts broadened the potentials offered by 
Citizen Science by requesting public participation in 
the observation of dog behaviours in the field of applied 
ethology [3-7]. Dogs, in particular, owing to their pro-
gressive gathering within the ever-growing boundaries of 
the urban settings, represent a natural test-bed of data 
collection by interested and motivated citizens.
All these examples concur to indicate that Citizen Sci-
ence constitutes a crucial tool to deepen the mutual ex-
change between scientists and the general public in the 
constant strive to integrate scientific endeavours in the 
daily lives of European citizens.
REFERENCES
1. Vukelic M, Mancini M, Vukelic D, Carere C. A cetacean 
monitoring system that integrates citizen science and sat-
ellite imagery. Rendiconti Lincei. 2017;1.
2. Hand E. Citizen science: people power. Nature. 
From dissemination to Citizen sCienCe
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handler-dog dyad during animal-assisted activities: a pilot 
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10.1016/j.jveb.2017.09.011
6. Pirrone F, Pierantoni L, Mazzola SM, Vigo D, Albertini 
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