Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays as never before, science has to account to the no expertise public about its activity. This happens in a context in which technological development increasingly materialises in the digital dimension, specifically through processes like the fusion between cyberspace, the internet and the social and physical world. Currently, the “Digital” is a growing scientific area, and it is no longer an emerging technology, being increasingly acknowledged at the international level (for example, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/commission-welcomes-agreement-digital-europe-programme-2021-2027).

The training and academic acknowledgement of research networks on the digital topic are being fostered not only by social reality but also, and to a large extent, by the political investment, which is starting to ascribe more and more emphasis to this topic (as principles to be implemented and with increasingly higher funding).

The “Digital” is a politically assumed goal in many regions worldwide (Japan: https://www.jst.go.jp/crds/pdf/en/CRDS-FY2016-WR-13.pdf), which entails and will entail an increase in funding for studies in this area (only by the example that I know best, in the European Union one can realise that the budget (2021-2027) will be extremely high: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/budget-june2018-digital-transformation_en.pdf; ingeneral: https://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/252451812/Digital-transformation-budgets-are-on-the-rise-for-2019).

The “Citizen Science in Digital Societies" aims to analyse, from a disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary perspective, the impact, influence, potential and challenges of these processes of digitalisation as an integrated individual-virtual technology relationship materialised at the macro, meso and micro-social levels. What's their implications in Citizen Science? The researchers and readers interested in this virtual-real relationship dimension, and its implications in Citizen Science, covering Technology, Exact Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities (encompassing the complementary knowledge of several geographic areas) are the target audience.

Dr. Sandro Serpa
Guest Editor

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