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Adequate infrastructure for citizen science is constantly growing and has become increasingly important in providing support to citizen science activities, both nationally and internationally. Many types of citizen science infrastructures exist, with different functionalities. This chapter focuses on current citizen science platforms. The platforms addressed in this chapter are those which display citizen science data and information, provide good practical examples and toolkits, collect relevant scientific outcomes, and are accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens to scientific institutions to authorities, politicians, and public media. We present current citizen science platforms in Europe and associated (inter)national citizen science networks and discuss how these platforms have become increasingly vital within citizen science. Based on these examples, we elaborate on challenges for citizen science platforms, such as establishing and financing platforms, designing user interfaces, maintaining platforms, promoting the usage of platforms, etc. We conclude with an outlook into potential development needs of citizen science platforms in the future. ; publishedVersion

AbstractCERN offers a highly relevant case to probe some of the assumptions of current debates on science diplomacy. Building on the existing literature and a number of expert interviews, this article discusses the origin of CERN, its governance structure, and the particular constellation of interests that form part of CERN's science diplomacy. We understand science diplomacy as a practice and explore this at the intersection between goals and values, everyday conduct, and the governance structure guiding interactions. Reaching beyond CERN as a specific case, we address the tension at the heart of science diplomacy debates between promoting peaceful relations and furthering strategic and national interests. We argue that it is precisely within this tension that science diplomacy unfolds. Further, the particular governance structure that CERN employs emerges as a blueprint for supporting a level playing field between scientists and diplomats and promoting scientific goals beyond narrow political considerations. Lastly, we make suggestions for capacity building and training in science diplomacy that focus on bringing the 'world of science' and the 'world of diplomacy', a distinction which emerged prominently from the literature and the interviews, together in useful ways.

AbstractReal-life risk decisions are taken in a social context. However, we still know little about how that affects risk decisions. We have experimentally investigated the effect of social comparison on risk taking. We designed an experiment that allows us to isolate social comparison from other channels whereby the social context can affect risk decisions. The design also allows us to find impacts of the social reference point both if the individual cares about the distance to the social reference point and if she cares about her rank. Thus, we compare risk-taking in isolation to risk-taking with various exogenously imposed social reference points. We find that risk-taking is affected by the desire to get ahead of others, both when the social reference point is within reach (rank can be affected) and when it is out of reach (rank cannot be affected). Our results suggest that people do not only care about rank but also care about the distance to the social reference point.