# Science Cafes, Science Shops and the Lockdown Experience in Florence and Rome+
## 3 Science Shops  
A science shop (\"shop\" in the sense of \"exhibition\"; they are more similar to \"windows\" or \"counters\") is a methodology by which universities and research centers can offer services to the population.  
Citizens can express requests and needs, and, if these themes can give origin to research, they are assigned to university students as part of their PhD, master, or bachelor degree; part of their traineeship; or part of an examination, always under the guidance of a researcher. The results are then presented to the population.  
Figure 1: Different modalities of Science cafés: (**a**) in a conference room of the public Library “Oblate”, in the center of Florence; (**b**) a Cine-science at the Cinema “La Compagnia”, Florence; and (**c**) a science cafe in the Central Market of Florence.  
Science shops [21] are one of the practical realizations of the principle that the universities and research institutes should open their doors offering services directly addressed to citizens, clearly combining them with their fundamental mission of education, formation, and research.  
In fact, in addition to the classic missions of the universities, such as teaching and research, a third mission was added in the last years in Italy, concerning the transfer of research results to society. It regards both the technological transfer of research (patents, spin-offs, third-party contracts and agreements, and intermediaries) and the production of social and cultural public goods (public engagement, cultural heritage, continuous training, popularization, and mass education).  
In a certain sense, since in Italy universities are funded at least in part by resources coming from the general taxation, this engagement provides a return on the investments to the civil society and the socioeconomic structures of the society.  
The activities belonging to the third mission contribute, in Italy and other countries, to the evaluation of the universities and research centers and thus concur to the establishment of their level of public funding.  
At present, some of the authors are participating in the European project about science shops, InSPIRES (Ingenious Science shops to promote Participatory Innovation, Research and Equity in Science), contributing with their experiences about science cafes [22].  
One of the main goals of this project is experimenting with a more participative approach, in which the research proposal is discussed in a public event and citizens are directly involved in the investigation, in a way similar to citizen science.  
The Florence Science Shop is trying to involve throughout the process not only the associations and the stakeholders involved in the research question, but the whole citizenship, opening the doors to citizens in the beginning phase, in the development phase, and in the final dissemination phase. This goal is pursued by a strict collaboration with the Caffe-Scienza association, using the science cafes as the main channel for engagement and evaluation of the projects. Another goal is that of using the Internet in a more effective way for the science shop purposes [23].