The ScienceUs team travelled to Finland in March to take part in the ECSA Conference, hosted by the University of Oulu.

On Wednesday, 4 March, Gloria Koepke and Nadia Bates moderated a panel entitled “Successful strategies to sustain and upscale citizen science initiatives in different socio-cultural contexts, across regions and scientific domains.” The session began with a brief discussion on different types of scaling, followed by an interactive padlet exercise encouraging participants to “think big” by sharing their “one wish” to improve scaling for citizen science projects. Unsurprisingly, “funding” was the most frequently mentioned wish, alongside infrastructure, protocols, time, and standardisation.

The team then presented ScienceUs, with a particular focus on the Upscale Academy. This highlighted the Academy as a unique learning environment and showcased the tailored support it provides to five high-potential citizen science projects that have now entered the final phase of the ScienceUs project. The presentation also reflected on key challenges and lessons learned so far.

Dilek Fraisl, from our sister project CROPS, followed with a presentation on designing user-centered protocols for scaling citizen science – an initiative in which ScienceUs projects from both the Flourish and Harvest phases have been actively involved.

The panel also featured contributions from Jessica Wardlaw of the Natural History Museum in London and Andrea Sforzi of the Maremma Natural History Museum in Grosseto, Italy.

This led into a lively discussion on what is needed to successfully support projects in their scaling ambitions. Beyond the widely acknowledged need for increased funding, participants emphasised the importance of collaboration with local and national regulators to strengthen the use and recognition of citizen science data.

Participants particularly welcomed the transparency and openness of the panellists in addressing the challenges and obstacles involved in scaling processes.

On Thursday, Aline Baas and Fabien Borget led Panel P01, “From Margins to Metadata” , exploring how inclusive data management can make citizen science more equitable. They presented the 15 recommendations from the French national report Participatory Research and Data, showed how five ScienceUs projects are applying them in practice, and introduced a new DMP template tailored to participatory science. The session sparked lively discussion on the tensions between standardisation and local knowledge, with participants welcoming the practical tools and honest lessons shared. You can find a detailed article and the Data Management Plan Template here.

Also on Thursday, Cristian Ioja participated in the poster session, presenting the Europe‑wide ScienceUs competition, created to identify and support citizen science projects that can inform climate adaptation. It used transparent criteria, broad dissemination, and a multi‑stage evaluation to ensure fairness and scientific rigor. The process revealed key challenges – such as diverse project maturity and competition with other funding schemes, but also showed that diversity, clear communication, and structured evaluation significantly improve project quality. Overall, the competition demonstrated that citizen science can meaningfully contribute to Europe’s climate change adaptation efforts, but also highlighted the need to scale existing initiatives.