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Figshare Becomes Part of NERC Community for Engaging Environments Project

15th April 2019
 | Katy Alexander

Vision for public participation in environmental science produced at a national meeting in Stage 1 of Engaging Environments

An innovative project that will see researchers collaborate with diverse communities on issues in environmental science has been awarded £1·3 million through NERC’s Engaging Environments programme. The NERC Community for Engaging Environments project aims to engage a broad range of audiences, including those typically less represented in public engagement activities. The project takes an innovative approach that combines community development, storytelling and citizen science, enabling diverse communities to have a meaningful stake in discussing and tackling environmental science issues such as climate change and pollution.

Figshare was approached by Erinma Ochu, Salford University Lecturer and Figshare Ambassador, to develop a place to store and share the research outputs of a collaborative project she was a member of across eight universities. Their mission was to engage the public in environmental science, particularly climate change.

Erinma wanted to ensure that the research had been assigned a DOI and would be persistently available for other researchers and members of the public to access. The repository, powered by Figshare, will be a community showcase of videos, podcasts, maps, visualisations, immersive experiences, and more with contributions from the members of all eight participating universities. The objective will be to develop new insights from large scale citizen science projects and to support project impact and case study creation which can be measured using Figshare’s usage tracking services including views, downloads, citations, and Altmetrics.

Mark Hahnel, founder and CEO of Figshare commented:

“It’s great to be working with such an important cause as the NERC Community for Engaging Environments project. We’re excited to be able to provide them a space for collaborative data sharing, impact measuring, and persistent, open access for their community-led engagement project.”