A library of high-quality resources providing guidance, ideas and insights to anyone who communicates science has been released on the online European Competence Centre for Science Communication.

The SciComm Toolbox is a searchable library of guides, reports, and materials curated and quality-checked by volunteer reviewers under the coordination of an appointed Curation Board, managed by team members from the COALESCE project.

Resources currently available in the toolbox include a short guide to developing videos communicating science, informed by insights from an innovative experimental video ‘Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell’, a short report on how citizen science can be a means to tackle misinformation, and a guide to quality criteria for online science communication. But there are many more.

These resources were developed within projects funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program Science With and For Society (Swafs-19), including TRESCA, NEWSERA and ENJOI, as well as within COALESCE. In the future, it is planned for the toolbox to expand.

SciComm Lunchtime Series

Promoting the dialogue on complex, controversial issues. The discussion games 🔗

📅 14 October 2026 | 12:30-14:30 CET
🎓 Intermediate
🗣 Paola Rodari, Sissa Medialab
🎫 Register here

Communicate to policymakers 🔗

📅 11 November 2026 | 12:30-14:30 CET
🎓 Intermediate
🗣 Joana Magalhães, Science for Change
🎫 Registration will open soon

Science communication in times of crisis 🔗

📅 16 December 2026 | 12:30-14:30 CET
🎓 Intermediate
🗣 Elisabetta Tola, Formicablu & Paola Rodari, SISSA Medialab
🎫 Registration will open soon

Behind the Curtain of Science – Science & Theatre Festival | Are you a performer and would you like to join the festival in Prague? Get in touch with Julie Nekola Novakova.

Spreading 'Snack and Maths' clubs and exhibitions all over the world | Are you looking for support to develop such activities?  Get in touch with Corot Eva.

Sign up for the Competence Centre platform and share your opportunities

What does it look like to be a science communication professional in Europe? What kind of skills and knowledge do different types of science communicators currently need? And how will those skills and that knowledge need to have changed in 10 years' time? Those were the provocative questions asked during the first minutes of the fourth topic online session in a series of Mutual Learning Exercises (MLE) on Science Communication in Research and Innovation, organised by COALESCE.

As with previous MLE sessions, the goal was to bring together European Research Area (ERA) member state representatives to discuss policy challenges and opportunities to support science communication. The meeting welcomed participants from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

Under the topic “Building skills and competences – towards a science communication competence framework”, participants in the MLE on 25 June were invited into a participatory exercise aimed at understanding professionalisation paths in science communication, learning about strategies for training and capacity building, fostering reward and recognition in science communication careers, and supporting the inclusion of science communication in local and national strategies. 

Group discussions were preceded by a roundtable with Gian Maria Greco, outgoing Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA); Rebecca Lawrence, vice-chair of the Declaration On Research Assessment (DORA); Blanka Csite, Policy and Project Officer at the European Association Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA); and Andrea Giraldo Sevilla, Research Manager at the European Citizen Science Project (ECS).

As the COALESCE team develops the Science Communication Competence Framework, it is targeting different audiences to support their self-evaluation and professional development. One of such group is the staff working in museums, science centres, and other informal learning providers.

After discussing the framework with various stakeholders, the final step is to validate it on a wider scale using a short survey. If you are an expert in this area – museums, science centres, or other informal learning organisations –, please indicate whether the competences identified in our earlier work are relevant to the field, and whether they have been allocated to the correct level (Foundational, Intermediate, Advanced or Expert). You can also suggest any missing competencies.

The survey will be open until 15 November. Please feel free to share it with colleagues in this field.

For the second SciComm Connections interview, we brought together a well-established scientific institute in Poland and a network of early-career researchers from Finland. Anna Przybyło-Józefowicz is now the communication and PR manager at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IChF PAS), the Polish COALESCE Hub. Katja Kaurinkoski, from The Science Basement, the Finnish COALESCE Hub, is just as enthusiastic as Anna about being part of a  Hub. She says it has been eye-opening and inspiring to learn about all the projects other Hubs are involved in.

[Excerpt of the interview]

Would you like to be part of a science communication research project? What do you think you could contribute, and what kind of project would you be interested in taking part in?
[Anna] We are not participating yet, but we would like to. We are open to various topics. The strategy topic is especially close to my heart, if there is any research going on in that area. Also important is what we can offer: we have a really big platform to test out solutions, even at the pilot level. At the Institute, we have 30 research groups and many labs, and the Polish Academy of Sciences, of which we are part, has 69 institutes.

[Katja] TSB is not participating either, but we would be delighted to join. In your invitation for the interview, when you asked for ideas to improve the relationship between practitioners and researchers in science communication, I thought of exactly this: bringing practitioners into research, into ongoing studies. For example, researchers could pick one of our projects – the afternoon talks, the podcast, the youth science club – and see whether it is really serving the purpose we think it does. Are we really reaching our audiences as effectively as we could? For the youth science club, it would be good to look at it from a pedagogical angle, for example.

Another way TSB could be involved in science communication research would be around training materials, given that we are training people. It could be really nice to see how effective the training is and the difference it makes for people from different backgrounds.

Opinion article by Anna Przybylo-Józefowicz, communication and PR manager at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, and coordinator of the Polish Hub within the COALESCE project. First published by University World News on 8 July 2026.

Science has become global. Science communication has not.

Scientific research is increasingly borderless. Breakthroughs emerge from international collaborations, cross-border funding and multinational teams. Yet a striking paradox lies at the heart of modern science: while knowledge production is profoundly international, the structures responsible for communicating its societal value remain local, culturally conditioned and institutionally siloed.

Research systems have long recognised mobility as a driver of excellence. Researchers routinely travel and benefit from exchange programmes. Yet the same logic is rarely applied to the professional communities supporting them. While institutions invest heavily in researcher mobility, opportunities for science communication professionals to learn from peers abroad remain limited and informal.