-Co-design a self-sustaining EU Competence Centre for scicomm as a virtual platform: COALESCE set up a co-design and co-development working framework, as an iterative and agile process based on end users-producers feedback, to be applied in three release stages of the virtual platform and following on previous COS4CLOUD, PARCOS, and ECS projects results. Several consultations and co-creation activities with multiple stakeholders, including policymakers, civil society, scicomm professionals, journalists, researchers, and industry, were performed to understand their needs and expectations for the Competence Centre. We converted these into functional requirements for the platform, to include a scicomm innovation cycle, a roadmap for rapid mobilisation in times of crisis and principles, and standards and criteria for quality scicomm resources. Cross-project collaborations with ongoing projects, such as the ECS, PATTERN, REINFORCING, and Skills4EOSC allow mutual learning on methodologies, resources and/or functionalities to foster connection of complementary services, methodologies, and future sustainability.
-Transform the knowledge consolidated from SwafS-19, H2020, HE, and national scicomm projects into valuable resources and tools for the Competence Centre through co-creation processes: The transformation of knowledge consolidated in scicomm projects is an ongoing process throughout the project’s lifetime using the COALESCE SciComm Innovation cycle, launched in the first platform release. The cycle is applied and further validated within the project itself, to identify the needs of different target audiences and co-produce new resources that are usable in different contexts and for different purposes. In parallel, advances have been made to define the virtual platform metadata for the database (currently 100 resources), which will be continuously updated to feed multiple tools and resources developed under the project.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE network of N&R hubs as the physical venues for developing the participatory activities and exploiting the COALESCE resources beyond the scope of the project: The Competence Centre will operate under a virtual platform connected to a network of 20 national and regional hubs established outside the consortium, in the EU27 + the UK and Ukraine. A yearly period of expressions of interest will be announced. So far, 10 organisations from Portugal, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia have been enrolled, in addition to the 12 partner organisations within an additional 8 countries. Mutual learning and exploitation meetings took place to learn from other national and EU level successful cases.
-Establish and coordinate the COALESCE Communities of knowledge and practice (CoP): The COALESCE CoP, currently with +1400 members, was established building on previous SwafS-19 CoPs, including quadruple helix stakeholders, scicommers, and journalists, following an activities plan in connection with a communication and dissemination plan. So far, more than 1700 people have been involved in more than 50 participatory activities and pilot training. This created opportunities to increase networking, capacity building and mutual learning for responsible, trustworthy, and rapidly mobilised scicomm.
-Actively involve scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, scientific and journalist networks, and University Alliances (UA): COALESCE continues to involve and expand its external stakeholder panel composed so far by 12 scicomm (inter)national and regional networks, 6 scientific and 5 journalist networks, 6 UA, 14 science policy organisations, and 11 EU projects. These will further participate in activities and events to co-create and validate resources, support mainstreaming excellent scicomm in the ERA, encourage institutional changes to recognise scicomm practices within academia, and produce policy recommendations for long-term impact.
