The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a series of global development targets adopted by all UN member states in 2015 to address the world’s most pressing societal, environmental, and economic challenges by 2030. The achievement of the 17 SDGs depends on the ability to accurately measure progress towards their 169 targets through timely, relevant, and reliable data. However, the agreed 231 indicators to monitor the SDGs are beyond the means and capacities of the producers and users of official statistics, including the National Statistical Offices (NSOs), line ministries, and UN agencies. Citizen science, in addition to other new sources of data, such as Earth Observation and mobile phone data, offers a novel solution to complement and enhance official statistics, while at the same time potentially mobilizing action and raising awareness for achievement of the SDGs.
Themes
The aim of the special issue of the open access journal "Citizen Science: Theory and Practice" is to publish articles that offer insights into the contributions of Citizen Science to the monitoring, implementation and achievement of the SDGs as well as other international agreements. Possible topics include:
- Demonstrating the contributions of citizen science to one or more SDGs, targets and indicators or other international development and policy frameworks
- Challenges and opportunities for the uptake of citizen data to monitor progress on one or more SDGs targets and indicators, and other international development and policy frameworks
- The transformative potential of citizen science for achievement of the SDGs and international development and policy frameworks
- Global, national, and local level analyses of gaps in SDG monitoring, or monitoring of other international development and policy frameworks linking this to citizen science
- City-based case studies of linking city strategies with community-based projects
Articles
In this special collection, we seek a range of papers including research papers, review and synthesis papers, case studies, essays, and method papers. Contributions from the Global South and other underrepresented areas in the academic literature on Citizen Science are particularly welcome
Deadlines
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Call for abstracts: 17 March 2022
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Closing date for abstracts: 30 April 2022
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Notification of accepted abstracts: 30 May 2022
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Invited paper submissions: 30 September 2022
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Publication Date: Spring 2023