Welcome to CROPS

Curating, Replicating, Orchestrating, and Propagating Citizen Science across Europe

Where you’ll find everything you need to know about upscaling your citizen science activities.

CROPS at ECSA 2026

In early March 2026, the CROPS project joined over 600 researchers and practitioners in Oulu, Finland

Across four intense and inspiring days, CROPS contributed to advancing one key question: how do we scale citizen science in a way that is sustainable, impactful, and inclusive?

Together with partners including Earthwatch, IIASA, and INOVA, CROPS designed and delivered a series of sessions tackling the core challenge of scaling citizen science.

From theory to stress-test: what we learned validating citizen science with EU experts

Back in 2020, the JRC report Scaling up Citizen Science, co-authored by our very own Giovanni Maccani & Javier Creus, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: why do some citizen science projects spread across Europe while others stay stuck in one town?

That report gave us our CROPS Scalability Assessment Framework: nine enablers of scaling, from "proof of value" to "community and champions" to "alignment with local context."

The CROPS project was established to build up where that map left off, and to find out whether the theory holds up in the real world.

CROPS aspires to inform and evolve the EU Research & Innovation system so that it can adequately support the transition of citizen science from small-scale to a Europe-wide level, moving it towards a modern, open-science approach.

On this site you will find a variety of tools, resources and guidance regarding the potential upscaling of citizen science practices, along with examples of projects that have successfully uspcaled their activities to the trans-national level.

To support the upscaling of citizen science, CROPS will undertake 4 interweaving tasks:

the appraisal of existing citizen science practices
the creation of protocols and guidance for the upscaling of citizen science
the identification and guidance regarding practical considerations, including data sharing, sustainability, RRI and funding
the development of transnational citizen science communities