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April 2026
23 Apr 2026, 1:03
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Čeština
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Dear readers,
With the arrival of April, internationally associated with citizen science, attention turns to the ways in which research is conducted today: from public engagement and data practices to the infrastructures that make results accessible. As the scope of these activities expands, questions of quality, sharing, and trust come increasingly to the fore. Equally important is how these principles are conveyed in education and subsequently translated into everyday practice.
These interconnections are at the heart of the current edition of our April newsletter. We offer perspectives on citizen science in both the Czech and international contexts, an interview focused on teaching data skills, and updates from the fields of open science and scholarly publishing.
The EOSC CZ team
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What does a month of citizen science look like in practice? It encompasses activities in which members of the public participate in both data collection and analysis – globally involving tens of millions of people, and in Czechia up to hundreds of thousands of participants each year. Dozens of projects are available to those interested, ranging from monitoring birds and landscape changes to working with sensor data, as well as analysing images of galaxies or recordings from camera traps.
What is the significance of citizen science for Czech research, how are data handled within it, and what challenges does it bring? These and other questions are explored for Novinky.cz by Jakub Trojan, founder of the Czech and Slovak Citizen Science Platform.
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Public participation brings large volumes of observations and measurements into research. A three-way interview with researchers explains what this means in practice: how data quality is ensured, how results are handled in terms of sharing, and what determines trust in the outputs. Alongside its benefits, certain limitations also emerge, shaping where this approach is most effective.
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How and where can you get involved and experience citizen science first-hand? For example, the City Nature Challenge (24–27 April 2026) invites participants to record nature in their surroundings – requiring only a mobile phone and a few minutes of time. Your observations become part of global databases and may contribute to scientific studies and valuable new insights.
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The second election of EOSC CZ working group leaders has concluded. The electoral process lasted two months and culminated in an online vote with a 52% participation rate among members. In eight working groups, the current leaders continue in their roles, while in two, Physical Sciences and Environmental Sciences, new leadership has been appointed.
The newly elected leaders take over at a time when the EOSC CZ initiative is shifting from infrastructure development towards its practical use, service development, and strengthening its impact on research.
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What does the international discussion on the future of research data look like in practice? Representatives of EOSC CZ took part in the FAIR Digital Objects Conference in Vienna, which brought together experts from around the world, from Europe and the United States to Africa and Japan.
Which posters did the Czech representatives present, and what topics sparked the most debate?
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The March meeting of the data steward community in Brno once again demonstrated that research data management is not only about tools and methodologies, but above all about people. The exchange of experience, new approaches, and international inspiration confirmed that this community is not only growing but also naturally shaping the future of research data management in Czechia.
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How can the European Open Science Cloud be ensured to become a truly functional platform for science, rather than merely a technological infrastructure? Representatives of European research infrastructures sought answers at a workshop in Milan. The discussion suggested that, alongside technological foundations, a fundamental shift in data practices and cross-community collaboration is also essential.
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Planning research data management does not have to be complicated. The Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) guides users through the creation of a Data Management Plan step by step. The tool provides guidance, explains key concepts, and offers recommendations as well as examples of good practice, making even complex topics easier to navigate and understand. The result is a well-structured plan that meets funder requirements and, more importantly, supports better data management throughout the research lifecycle. Discover how DSW saves time, supports team collaboration, and fits into the national EOSC CZ environment.
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He started by hacking video games, followed by twelve years of military service. Today, he teaches data science at the prestigious University of Leipzig. In his teaching, he focuses on ensuring that students understand fundamental principles and are able to apply them in practice, even without an extensive programming background. He works with students from a range of disciplines and demonstrates how data work can be meaningful in medicine, public administration, and the humanities. What insights such experience brings for teaching and working with artificial intelligence is explored in the April interview with Matthias Täschner.
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One of the goals of Citizen Science Month at the international level this year is to engage more than one million people in so-called “Acts of Science”. The Citizen Science Month initiative, led by SciStarter and Arizona State University, is significantly strengthening its European dimension this year through the involvement of the European Citizen Science Association. The ECSA helps raise the visibility of European projects and connects participants across communities.
It builds on last year’s edition, which engaged more than half a million people from 126 countries, and which is now evolving towards even broader and more coordinated collaboration. From classifying galaxies and monitoring biodiversity to community-based projects in schools and libraries, citizen science is increasingly establishing itself as a regular part of research practice.
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CERN will host the next phase of the Open Research Europe platform, which provides free publication of research results funded from public sources. In doing so, the initiative supported by the European Commission and a consortium of European research organisations further advances the Diamond Open Access model – publishing with no fees for either authors or readers.
The platform is based on an open publish–review–curate model: articles are published following an initial screening, peer review takes place openly, and its outputs are made publicly available. Since its launch in 2021, the platform has published more than 1,200 articles by over 6,300 authors.
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The role of citizen science in education was among the main themes of this year’s March conference of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), held for the sixth time. The discussions showed that citizen science is not only a tool for data collection but also an effective way to bring science closer to students and to develop their critical thinking and information literacy.
These activities will also be continued by the EOSC CZ Training Centre, which is organising Citizen Science Day for secondary school students on 4 May.
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We also provide a recording of a recent webinar and several tips on international training opportunities.
All our training courses are available on the EOSC CZ Training Centre website. If you've missed any sessions, you can access the recordings of completed training events on our YouTube EOSC Czech Republic channel.
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Tips on further training
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Wed 29 Apr
EGI Federation webinar introduces the EGI Artefact Registry platform. Lecturer Adam Rošinec (ICS MUNI) will focus on its key functionalities as well as practical use cases.
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Tue 5 May
The open-source OMERO platform for the centralised storage, management, and visualisation and analysis of microscopic and biological imaging data will be presented in the Shared RDM webinar (as part of the RDM in Austria series).
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Tue 12 May
Within the EOSC Beyond webinar, representatives of selected nodes will share their experience and technical solutions in building the EOSC Federation.
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Thu 21 May
A webinar primarily intended for researchers will present updates to the EOSC EU Node platform and how to use it effectively in their research.
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Registration for the opening conference of the Open Science II project has now continued in an online participation mode, as the in-person capacity has been reached. The two-day conference, taking place on 25–26 May 2026 in Prague, will focus on research data, repository development, and the sharing of experience across the project and the broader EOSC CZ community. The programme will include lectures, panel discussions, and hands-on workshops dedicated to repository development and enhancement, as well as presentations of the project’s interim results.
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The second edition of the Summer School for Data Stewards will offer a practice-oriented training programme introducing tools and approaches that support and simplify the day-to-day work of data stewards, set in the inspiring environment of the Jeseníky Mountains.
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How do we currently work with research data, and how does this approach influence the evaluation of science? The one-day conference Re:vize vědy, taking place on 11 June at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, will focus precisely on this shift. The programme will connect the experience of Czech institutions with international practice and open up topics such as data policies, infrastructures, and new approaches to research assessment. The morning session in Czech will focus on practical aspects, while the afternoon session in English will feature an international keynote and a discussion on the future of research evaluation.
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