How the VERA Platform Helps Citizen Scientists Collaborate | Katina Magazine

"Their work was part of one of the ten pilot projects of a European Union-funded initiative called COESO (Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues) that focused on advancing participatory research in the social sciences and humanities (SSH), which one of us, Alessia, coordinated. COESO participants tried to address the questions raised by the Lisbon group by co-designing a digital platform for facilitating and giving visibility to participatory citizen science. This platform, called VERA (Virtual Ecosystem for Research Activation), became COESO’s main outcome. It is now managed by OPERAS (Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for the Social Sciences and Humanities), a not-for-profit research infrastructure where one of us, Carol, serves as Service Marketing and Community Outreach officer...."