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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science

The characteristics of citizen science defined in the documents in this repository are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. They attempt to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set. The explanation notes provide more discussion about how these characteristics were created and what they mean in practice.

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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science

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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science The characteristics of citizen science defined in the documents in this repository are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. They attempt to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set.

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Katrin Vohland

Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - Leibniz, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science (MfN), Berlin, Germany
Natural History Museum (NHM), Vienna, Austria

Provides a unique overview of the field of citizen science

Explores and summarizes an innovative research field

Case studies illustrate the varying aspect of citizen science

Research based on a pan-European networks of experts

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About this book

This open access book discusses how the involvement of citizens into scientific endeavors is expected to contribute to solve the big challenges of our time, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities within and between societies, and the sustainability turn. The field of citizen science has been growing in recent decades. Many different stakeholders from scientists to citizens and from policy makers to environmental organisations have been involved in its practice. In addition, many scientists also study citizen science as a research approach and as a way for science and society to interact and collaborate. This book provides a representation of the practices as well as scientific and societal outcomes in different disciplines. It reflects the contribution of citizen science to societal development, education, or innovation and provides and overview of the field of actors as well as on tools and guidelines. It serves as an introduction for anyone who wants to get involved in and learn more about the science of citizen science.

Keywords

Citizen science tools and guidelines

Data quality, standardization, interoperability

Evaluation and quality criteria in citizen science

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity

Knowledge transfer and science communication

Open Access

About the editors

Katrin Vohland supports and investigates knowledge exchange between science, policy, and different publics mainly in the area of biodiversity. She chairs the COST Action CA15212 to explore the added value of citizen science. She was based at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research. Since June 2020 she is the Director General of the Natural History Museum Vienna, Austria.

Anne Land-Zandstra studies citizen science as a form of informal science education. Her research focuses on participant motivation and learning impact. She is a member of the Dutch Citizen Science Lab and is vice-chair of the COST Action CA15212. She is also an assistant professor at Leiden University.

Luigi Ceccaroni manages innovation and strategic research at Earthwatch, an independent research organisation based in Oxford, UK. He is co-vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association.

Rob Lemmens works in the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente, with a research focus on semantic web technologies and the improvement of geo-crowdsourcing methods.

Josep Perelló is the leader of the OpenSystems Research Group and the coordinator of the CoAct EU research project. His research is focused on citizen social science and more particularly on public experimentation on a wide variety of social issues related to human collective behaviour in the field of computational social science.

Marisa Ponti works in the Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. Her current research focuses on machine-human cooperation to advance collective knowledge for scientific activities and to solve social problems.

Roeland Samson is professor at the University of Antwerp. His research focuses on urban air pollution monitoring, ecosystem services of urban green spaces, urban biodiversity, and the link between air pollution and health. He initiated and coordinated AIRbezen (strawbAIRies), and was involved in Curieuzeneuzen, both citizen science campaigns on air quality monitoring.

Katherin Wagenknecht coordinates the EU-Citizen.Science project. With a background in sociology and cultural anthropology her research focus is on participatory research practice and urban space. She was based at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research.

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This Open Access book gives a comprehensive overview of citizen science as an academic field of study. Practical issues are discussed such as interoperability of data or the best use of platforms and engagement tools. The book examines citizen science throughout Europe and the world.

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Citizen Science: Everybody Counts | Caren Cooper | TEDxGreensboro

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Welcome to the platform for sharing Citizen Science projects, resources, tools, and training

The static part of the platform has recently been translated into 11 languages. Do you want to help with translation? Please click here

Projects

174 results in Projects , click here to see all of them

Resources

101 results in Resources , click here to see all of them

Training

25 results in Training , click here to see all of them

Organisations

117 results in Organisations , click here to see all of them

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Welcome to the platform for sharing Citizen Science projects, resources, tools, and training The static part of the platform has recently been translated into 11 languages. Do you want to help with translation?

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Међународни уметнички пројекат „Они живе" :: ДОМ КУЛТУРЕ „СТУДЕНТСКИ ГРАД"

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Почео је међународни уметнички пројекат под називом „Они живе" - студентски животи откривени кроз контекстуалне уметничке праксе
Међународни пројекат „Они живе" - студентски животи откривени кроз контекстуалне уметничке праксе", чији је носилац Дом културе Студентски град, започет је онлајн састанком партнера из пет европских земаља. Пројекат се реализује од септембра 2020. до краја фебруара 2023. године, у оквиру програма за културу и медије Европске Уније „Креативна Европа". Поред Дома културе Студентски град из Београда који је лидер пројекта, као партнери на пројекту учествују и Међународни центар за архивска истраживања „Икарус Хрватска" из Загреба, Институт за савремену умјетност из Цетиња, Академија примјењених уметности из Ријеке, Факултет за аудиовизуелне комуникације на Универзитету краљ Хуан Карлос из Мадрида. Придружени партнери на пројекту су Институт за уметност у контексту на Универзитету уметности из Берлина и Центар за примењену историју из Београда.

Пројекат „Они живе" бави се студентским животом од краја Другог светског рата до данас у контексту свакодневног живота у студентским домовима, културних навика и слободног времена студената, међуљудских односа и односа међу половима, као и друштвеног и политичког ангажовања студената.

Циљ пројекта је подстицање студентске популације да учествује у разумевању и заједничком креирању савремене уметности, користећи архивске материјале и учествујући у пратиципативним уметничким активностима током резиденцијалних боравака уметника у студентским домовима. Резултати пројекта ће послужити као смернице за менаџере културних институција и уметничких галерија, кустосе и уметнике, за даље унапређивање иновативних приступа развоју младе публике.

Маида Груден, координаторка пројекта истакла је:

- Пројекат „Они живе" настао је из претходних искустава које је Дом културе Студентски град стекао кроз реализацију два пројекта: „Портрет Студењака", партиципативни фотографски подухват о нематеријалном културном наслеђу студената (2016) и Уметничку резиденцију „Цимер" организовану у Студентском граду (2014). Претходна искуства и одзив студентске популације и бивших становника Студентског града су нас уверила да је битно да наставимо проучавање живота студената и осветлимо ово недовољно испитано поље живота великог броја генерација. У сарадњи са садашњим и бившим студентима, намеравамо да дођемо до спектра одговора шта значи бити студент кроз историју, али сада кроз пројекат који се одвија на ширем географском подручју и у европском контексту. Савремене уметничке праксе имају велики колаборативни и партиципативни потенцијал у откривању специфичног погледа на историју и живот заједница, као и потребе њених припадника, тако да се одрживост овог пројекта односи на успостављање мреже уметничких резиденција које ће бити организоване у студентским домовима у различитим земљама.

У оквиру пројекта планирано је неколико различитих активности, које започињу интерним тренинзима о концепцији и методологији праксе усмене историје и дигиталном архивирању. Архивирање ће подразумевати процес прикупљања и дигитализације фотографског материјала о студентском животу и снимање интервјуа усмене историје у свакој земљи чланици пројекта. Уредници дигиталних архива ће бити студенти из домова и то по један уредник из сваке земље. Усмене историје ће бити снимљене и архивиране у форми разговора са бившим и садашњим становницима студентских домова. Планирано је архивирање фотографија и интервјуа у све четири земље чланице пројекта, на колаборативној дигиталној платформи Topotheque (topothek.at/en/) и званичном сајту пројекта, који ће бити покренут крајем новембра ове године.

Програм уметничких резиденција биће реализован у студентским домовима у Подгорици, Београду, Ријеци и Мадриду. У резиденцијама ће учествовати по један уметник из сваке земље партнера, након чега ће бити организоване изложбе и трибински програми. Пројекат „Они живе" ће на тај начин пружити прилику младим уметницима без претходног међународног искуства, који су заинтересовани за различите аспекте студентског живота у својим земљама, да учествују у уметничким резиденцијама у студентским домовима. У програму ће учествовати и млади кустоси из домена визуелних уметности, који ће заједно са уметницима бити одабрани на отвореном конкурсу, а затим ће похађати летњу школу о контекстуалним и партиципативним уметничким праксама на Институту за уметност у контексту у Берлину. Током резиденцијалих боравака у студентским домовима, уметници ће заједно са кустосима развијати уметничке пројекте директно са студентима као и на основу фото и аудио-материјала о студентском животу од 1945. до данас, која ће бити прикупљена и потхрањена на колаборативној дигиталној платформи Topotheque и званичном сајту пројекта. Након завршетка резиденција у студентским домовима, биће одржане изложбе са уметничким радовима, насталим током резиденција, у галеријским просторима у близини студентских заједница, које ће пратити каталог са текстуалним доприносима младих кустоса.

Мала „путујућа" изложба биће креирана од архивираног дигитализованог фото-материјала, који ће за изложбу одабрати петочлана група студената састављена од по једног студента из сваке од земаља чланица пројекта. Фокус изложбе биће усмерен на теме везане за свакодневни живот у студентским домовима, културне навике и друштвено-политички ангажман студената. Ова изложба биће одржана истовремено у студентским домовима у Београду, Мадриду, Подгорици, Ријеци и Загребу.

Књига произашла из пројекта „Они живе" састојаће се из три дела: научних текстова из области различитих дисциплина на тему студентског живота прикупљених путем отвореног конкурса, текстова уметника и кустоса о реализацији резиденција и приручника о методологији организације резиденција ове врсте у студентским домовима.

...

'They: Live' - student lives revealed through context-based art practices

The international project 'They: Live' - student lives revealed through context-based art practices, led by the Students' City Cultural Centre, has begun its activities with an online meeting of partners from five European countries. The project takes place from September 2020 to February 2023 and it is realised within the framework of the European Union's 'Creative Europe' Programme for Culture and Media. Besides the project leader - Students' City Cultural Centre from Belgrade, the partners on the project are the International Centre for Archival Research ICARUS Croatia from Zagreb, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) from Cetinje, the Academy of Applied Arts from Rijeka (APURI) and the Faculty of Audiovisual Communication at the King Juan Carlos University (URJC) from Madrid. The associate partners on the project are the Institute of Art in Context from the Berlin Art University and the Centre for Public History from Belgrade.

'They: Live' project explores the student life from the end of World War 2 to present day in the context of everyday life in student campuses, students' cultural habits and their free time, interpersonal and gender relations, as well as their social and political engagement. The aim of the project is to encourage student population to take part in understanding and co-creation of contemporary art, by means of using archive materials and taking part in participatory art activities during residential stays of artists in student campuses. The project results will be used as guidelines for managers of cultural institutions and art galleries, curators and artists, for the purpose of further improvement of innovative approaches to development of young audience.

Maida Gruden, a project co-ordinator, stated:

-'They: Live' project has emerged from previous experiences the Students' City Cultural Centre, gained through realisation of two projects: 'A Portrait of the Students' City Cultural Centre', a participatory photography project focusing on intangible cultural heritage of students (2016) and Art Residence 'A Roommate', organised at the Students' City campus (2014). The previous experiences and response from student population and former Students' City residents served as an assurance that it is important to continue exploring student lives and reveal this insufficiently explored field of life experienced by a large number of generations. In collaboration with present and former students, we intend to find a spectrum of answers to the question what it meant to be a student throughout history, but this time through a project taking place in a broader geographic area and in the European context. Contemporary art practices have a large collaborative and participatory potential in revealing a specific view of history and life of communities, as well as of the needs of their members, thus the sustainability of this project involves establishing a network of art residencies, which will be organised in student campuses in different countries.

Several activities have been planned in the framework of the project, starting with internal trainings on conception and methodology of oral history practice and digital archiving.

Archiving will include the process of collecting and digitalisation of photographic material on student life and recording oral history interviews in every country participating in the project.

The editors of digital archives will be student campus residents, with one editor from each country. Oral histories will be recorded and archived in form of conversation with former and present residents of student campuses. Archiving of photographs and recording interviews on the collaborative digital platform Topotheque (topothek.at/en/) and on the official project web-site, which will be launched by the end of October 2020, has been planned in all four countries participating in the project

Art residence programme will take place in student campuses in Podgorica, Belgrade, Rijeka and Madrid. One artist from each partner country will take part in art residences, which will be followed by exhibitions and public debate programmes. 'They: Live' project will in that manner provide young artists having no previous international experience, interested in various aspects of student life in their respective countries, with an opportunity to take part in art residencies in student campuses. Young curators involved in visual art, along with artists selected through an open call, will also take part in the project and attend the summer school on contextual and participatory art practices at the Institute of Art in Context in Berlin. During residential stays in student campuses, artists, together with curators, will develop art projects directly with students, as well as from photo and audio materials on student life from 1945 to present day, collected and stored on the collaborative digital platform Topotheque and the project's official web-site. Following the end of residences at student campuses, exhibitions displaying art works created during residential stays will be held in gallery spaces in the proximity of student communities, accompanied by a catalogue with textual contributions of young curators.

A small 'travelling' exhibition will be created from the archived digitalised photo-material, selected for the exhibition by a five-member group of students consisting of one student from each country participating in the project. The exhibition will focus on topics related to daily life in student campuses, cultural habits and social-political engagement of students. This exhibition will be held at the same time in student campuses in Belgrade, Madrid, Podgorica, Rijeka and Zagreb.

The book emerging from 'They: Live' project will consist of three parts: scientific texts from various scientific disciplines on the topic of student life, collected through an open call, texts written by artists and curators on organisation of residencies and a guide on methodology of organisation of this type of residential stay in student campuses.

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креативна европа

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Међународни уметнички пројекат „Они живе" :: ДОМ КУЛТУРЕ „СТУДЕНТСКИ ГРАД"

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Почео је међународни уметнички пројекат под називом „Они живе" - студентски животи откривени кроз контекстуалне уметничке праксе Међународни пројекат „Они живе" - студентски животи откривени кроз контекстуалне уметничке праксе", чији је носилац Дом културе Студентски град, започет је онлајн састанком партнера из пет европских земаља. Пројекат се реализује од септембра 2020.

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Following the participatory science lifecycle, the toolkit offers guidance and resources for a wide range of citizen science elements:

online and offline activities conducted in the planning and execution of CS projects, both by project organisers and citizen scientists;

various and evolving goals and scopes of CS projects, which develop over the course of a project, and shift with new insights;

different stages of project development, from early ideas to initiatives that have resulted in scientific publications and other forms of impacts.

We hope it will help citizen scientists plan, create, improve, and maximize the impact of their projects.

The toolkit cannot and does not want to be exhaustive. It is based on the collective experience and expertise in the ACTION accelerator, as well as the wider citizen science community. It includes tools and resources developed by ACTION, as well as others that we have found useful in practice. We will keep adding to it for the lifetime of the ACTION project, and beyond.

Who is the toolkit for?

The toolkit is meant for pollution-focused citizen science projects of all kinds, and everyone who wishes to apply citizen science methods. While some of the aspects we discuss in it may be less relevant for non-pollution focused projects, such projects may still benefit from the insights and tools provided. The toolkit is written for citizen volunteers, local communities interested in starting a citizen science project, researchers wishing to engage with citizens in their work, public authorities interacting with citizens or working on policies where citizen science insights are relevant.

Different types of projects will need different types of resources to enable them. For this toolkit, we will distinguish five types of citizen science projects, broadly following the typology by Wiggins & Crowston (2011):

Action projects: These projects support local activism with environmental and/or policy goals. They are often formed bottom-up and conducted locally. They may be hard to scale to larger areas or participant numbers, but rarely need to scale at all; they may be replicated in other localities instead. For example, ACTION pilot WOWNature plants trees and sensors to assess how these improve the local air quality.

Conservation projects: These projects support the long-term management of natural resources, and may have an additional educational purpose. They are often run by public institutions, with data used to make or support policy decisions. They are place-bound, but the region they cover can be very large. For example, ACTION pilot De Vlinderstichting counts butterflies and dragonflies in the whole of the Netherlands, to monitor populations and inform environmental and other policy decisions.

Investigation projects: These projects support scientific research, and often include a strong educational purpose. They are often run across a wide geographical spread with large numbers of volunteers, supported by technology. For example, ACTION pilot Street Spectra collects data on street lighting that participants can collect and submit using their mobile phone. The data is made available in a public database, and will allow scientists to study the effects of LED streetlights on light pollution.

Education projects: These projects' primary goal is to educate, and provide formal or informal learning while engaging in research tasks. They do often but not exclusively address young audiences. For example, ACTION pilot Students, air pollution and DIY sensing works with students who run their own research projects using air quality sensors, educating them about scientific methods and air pollution.

Virtual projects: These are large-scale projects that function totally independent of physicality; they may share characteristics and goals with any of the other categories. Participants engage on online platforms, where task and platform design are selected to maintain interest and engagement., e.g. through gamification. For example, ACTION pilot Restart data workbench ​uses an online platform to analyse data collected by their repair workshops, to draw conclusions about their environmental impact.

While many different frameworks for citizen science exist (Schrögel & Kolleck, 2019), distinguishing projects by how they engage citizens, or how they are organised, we felt that a structure based on the goals and practical activities the projects conduct is most suitable to ACTIONs goal of inclusivity in CS. However, as no typology can be a perfect fit for all possible types of projects, we will deviate from the structure and add to it where necessary. We will use this typology to structure the toolkit, and help readers position themselves in the context of the tools and case studies we discuss. We will come back to the categories as we guide you through the participatory life cycle, and point out which types of resources may be more or less useful for different types of projects.

Users of the toolkit should consider which of the aspects they share with these categories, and note that this may be multiple. Case studies provided throughout the toolkit will be more or less relevant based on these characteristics. The ACTION pilots can broadly be categorised like this:

How to use the toolkit?

The toolkit follows the participatory science lifecycle. The lifecycle helps to orient your project through four stages: problem framing, research implementation, impact and sustainability, and policy impact, which each include a number of steps that projects can take. The framework aims to provide guidance on what a CS project could do, and a potential order of things; it helps to break down the steps, and provides a structure that is broadly applicable to all participatory science endeavours. Both the stages and the individual steps will look different for each project, and the persons and groups involved in each of the phases may differ.

While the layout of the lifecycle may suggest a neat sequence, in practice projects will find that there are feedback loops and iterations, and that some steps will have to be taken multiple times, while others can be skipped altogether. Looking at the lifecycle as a tool in its own right will help projects understand what they will have to do and consider in the future, thus supporting their awareness and planning in earlier stages. For example, considering routes to impact and sustainability while framing the problem will help projects achieve their goals and plan for success.

The objective of the first stage, problem framing, is to define and gather background information on the problem at hand, as well as engage relevant stakeholders. This will be most relevant for local communities, citizen scientists or others looking to start a citizen science project, such as civil servants or scientists looking for ways to engage citizens. In this phase, the whole project lifecycle should be considered, to set appropriate goals for the project, such as what impact it aims to achieve, how it is going to be maintained and financed, etc. At the end of this phase, projects should have a clear plan for the research that will be carried out.

In the second stage, research implementation, the citizen science project is implemented. This encompasses three phases:

During the design phase, projects create their research question, define their methodology, and select or develop appropriate data gathering instruments. For example, Citicomplastic decided about the types of composters they would test to try and compost bioplastics.

In the data phase, projects acquire, curate, process, analyse and interpret their data. For example, ACTION pilot Noise Maps placed audio sensors in different parts of Barcelona, and refined the locations after finding that they had to be installed at ground floor level to yield usable data.

In the results phase, projects summarise, publish and disseminate their findings for different stakeholder groups, and assess their impact on both the issues they are trying to address, and society, including their own participants. For example, several ACTION pilots presented their findings at Ars Electronica in September 2020.

Citizen engagement, while often focused in the research implementation phase, should ideally happen throughout the phases of the lifecycle.

In the third stage, impact and sustainability, projects find and use routes for policy agenda setting, and achieve sustainability of their community and data, as well as finances.

In the last stage, policy impact, projects use their work to help formulate policies, influence decision-making, and the implementation of policies.

The toolkit offers an introductory overview and guidance, a selection of tools, guidelines and recommendations, activities and case studies for each phase, to help CS projects understand and replicate best practice.

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Following the participatory science lifecycle, the toolkit offers guidance and resources for a wide range of citizen science elements: online and offline activities conducted in the planning and execution of CS projects, both by project organisers and citizen scientists; various and evolving goals and scopes of CS projects, which develop over the course of a project, and shift with new insights; different stages of project development, from early ideas to initiatives that have resulted in scientific publications and other forms of impacts.

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Science shops and its relation to Citizen Science

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Science shops and its relation to Citizen Science

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The Living Knowledge Network is composed of persons active in -or supportive of- Science Shops and Community Based Research. Living Knowledge aims to foster public engagement with, and participation in, all levels of the research and innovation process.

We facilitate cooperation with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to generate research ideas, questions and agendas. We perform research in response to these questions, either ourselves or with the assistance of others, notably higher education students. Our goal is to co-create research to find solutions and therefore make a positive impact on real world problems.

By doing this, we promote community focused cooperation between civil society and those involved in teaching, research and innovation, particularly in higher education. Our process of engaging with society aims to strengthen both the research process and its outcomes for all partners, and thus contribute to research excellence and innovation outcomes that meet views, wishes and demands of civil society.
More about the Living Knowledge basic concept (pdf)

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The Living Knowledge Network is composed of persons active in -or supportive of- Science Shops and Community Based Research. Living Knowledge aims to foster public engagement with, and participation in, all levels of the research and innovation process. We facilitate cooperation with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to generate research ideas, questions and agendas.

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ECSA - European Citizen Science Association

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ECSA & EU-Citizen.Science webinar #1: Characteristics of Citizen Science, May 2020

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The first ECSA conference was held in Berlin in 2016, with a second held in Geneva in 2018. They are an opportunity to accelerate knowledge-sharing across the organization and beyond, and to engage the host city in citizen science.

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about our platform

Bürger schaffen Wissen (citizens create knowledge) is the central platform for citizen science in Germany. The platform presents, connects and supports Citizen Science projects since November 2013. Its main purpose is to give an overview of citizen science projects to illustrate the concept of citizen science, to further develop the landscape of citizen science and so increasing its visibility within the German public and discourse.

Increasingly during the last years, the collaboration between scientific institutions and citizens involved in citizen science projects has experienced a great development. Along with the development, topics such as the further development of quality criteria or the impact of citizen science in 2020 will play a major role for us and all other citizen science actors.

The online plattform Bürger schaffen Wissen is a joint project by Wissenschaft im Dialog (gGmbH) and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

inform

We provide information about citizen science and current developments in research as well as about our projects and joint working groups through our various online channels.

connect

We connect actors across different disciplines and institutions and promote active discussions in our annual conference (Forum Citizen Science) and workshops.

create

We work on the conceptual development of citizen science. For this reason, we cooperate with the working groups in our network and are involved in the European Citizen Science Association to foster international cooperation.

Here you can find a selection of projects that are available in English grouped into categories.

Explore the projects

Citizen Science knows no boundaries - that is why Bürger schaffen Wissen is internationally connected. Click here to see more.

Check out where we are involved

GEWISS modular program (GEWISS-Bausteinprogramm)

From 2014 to 2016, a consortium of various institutions worked on building a modular program under the title BürGEr schaffen WISSen - Wissen schafft Bürger (GEWISS) (Citizens create knowledge - Knowledge creates citizens). The program discussed and further developed the implementation and strengthening of Citizen Science in Germany throughout various events and working groups. At the centre of attention was the development and publication of the Grünbuch (Green Paper) Citizen Science Strategy 2020 for Germany.

More about GEWISS (in German)

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about the platform | Buerger schaffen Wissen

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about our platform Bürger schaffen Wissen (citizens create knowledge) is the central platform for citizen science in Germany. The platform presents, connects and supports Citizen Science projects since November 2013. Its main purpose is to give an overview of citizen science projects to illustrate the concept of citizen science, to further develop the landscape of citizen science and so increasing its visibility within the German public and discourse.

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Biodiversity collections, including living and preserved biological and geological specimens, are a critical resource for scientists advancing knowledge that informs challenging global issues including climate change, biodiversity conservation, and our response to pandemics such as COVID-19 (see box 1).The recently published Extended Specimen Network (ESN) report (Thiers et al. 2019) by the Biodiversity Collections Network and the report on biological collections by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM 2020) have taken the community pulse on the state of collections. The ESN report, building on Webster's (2017) extended specimen concept, proposed connecting physical specimens with associated digital genetic, phenotypic, and environmental data as a focus for the next decade to unite and strengthen biological collections and maximize their value to science and society. The NASEM report had the charge of summarizing guidance to the National Science Foundation (NSF) regarding the sustainability of living stock and natural history collections. Both articulate a shared vision of the future of biological collections in which they are sustained through the actualization of their potential to inform twenty-first century science.

The recommendations of the two reports fall into five broad thematic areas or conceptual pillars: collecting new samples, continued digitization, data integration, education and workforce training, and infrastructure and sustainability. We suggest that the next step to build on these recommendations of both reports is the creation of an implementation plan for the ESN.

Collecting new samples

For collections to remain relevant, they need to grow through continued collection of biological samples documenting taxonomic, geographic, and temporal diversity. Newly collected specimens need to be more data rich and accompanied by environmental data, as well as a broad range of preparations to document their genotype and phenotype and associations to other organisms (e.g., host, parasite, pollinator, prey). More collaboration is needed between collections institutions and collectors to identify taxonomic, geographic, and temporal gaps and provide best practices regarding specimen and data collection. Data from next-generation collections must flow immediately and seamlessly into repositories so as not to add to the existing digitization backlog. Implementing a new approach to sample collection will require a higher degree of collaboration between researchers who generate collections and the institutions that house them. For NSF-funded projects, requiring a specimen management plan would link research collecting expenditure to collections maintenance through monetary support for digitization, curation, and long-term care on a per-specimen basis; would reinforce the value of voucher deposition; and would promote collaboration during proposal preparation.

Continued digitization

Over the last decade, targeted programs, such as the NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections, have facilitated the digitization of 30%-40% of the known collections in the United States. We must continue this effort, not only to maintain the current momentum but also to facilitate the discovery of the dark data residing in unknown or undigitized collections, such as small, regional, and project-based collections. In addition, the evolution of digitization technology is needed to improve efficiency, particularly for harder to digitize collections (e.g., entomology, paleontology, and parasitology; see box 2). Digitization and publication of FAIR data (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable; Wilkinson et al. 2016) ultimately enables data augmentation, integration, and linking, which facilitates interconnection of diverse collection types.

Data integration

The realization of the extended specimen concept is reliant on seamless data integration. Data sets are made increasingly valuable through the integration of data sources at various levels-both within and between collections and to data sets outside of a discipline-to extend, enrich, and connect data in order to inform current research and new avenues of exploration and to provide the necessary metrics for collections advocacy. Data integration requires both technological and social solutions, with both an underlying cyberinfrastructure and best practices and standards adopted by and with buy-in from the numerous actors involved in the data lifecycle. However, no integrated system yet exists to make all the necessary connections visible to all.

Education and workforce training

As the biodiversity science community looks to the future of biodiversity collections and the ESN, we must plan for the training of the current and future biodiversity workforce; data-literate collections professionals; graduate and undergraduate students in all disciplines; K-12 students moving into science, technology, engineering, and math; and the larger community wishing to be informed about biodiversity questions of global impact. At the center of all our efforts and training, we must be intentional in developing and engaging a diverse and global community of data providers and users that have equitable access to training and data resources to ensure an inclusive community respectful of the breadth of expertise and contributions of all partners to biodiversity science. Training must span the breadth of data users and include emerging technologies and skills from data science, biodiversity informatics, and computational science. Training must also continue in foundational skills and content knowledge from organismal biology and taxonomy. As we move forward, we need to be assessing community needs, providing clear pathways for gaining critical skills and entering careers, and supporting the education of a continuum of users from data collectors through end users with the infrastructure, skills, training, and access to build and use the ESN.

Infrastructure and sustainability

The infrastructure needed to maintain the integrity of biological collections specimens varies greatly among collection types but, in all cases, requires ongoing funding. Strategic planning for collections and alignment of collection and institutional goals will help ensure a collection's sustainability. Maximizing collection value requires planning and action at the community level as well. Consideration of the collective infrastructure needs of the nation's biological collections is still hampered by the lack of a comprehensive registry of such collections. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility's Registry of Scientific Collections ( www.gbif.org/grscicoll) provides the structure for such information, but we must make a community effort to populate this resource with information about both natural history and living collections.

Specimen tracking and access and benefit sharing

Equitable sharing of benefits derived from specimens is the moral and legal responsibility of biological collections, dictated by international agreements such as the Nagoya Protocol, implemented by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. To comply, institutions must track all documentation associated with specimens, document and share benefits as negotiated with providing countries, keep records of all instances of use, and allow access to documentation. An ESN implemented on a global scale or linked with complementary international efforts will increase the transparency of data acquisition and use and will maintain the chain of custody and responsibility for specimens and derived data.

Roles of collections organizations

The nature of the ESN requires robust advocacy for living and preserved collections to the general biological community and to funding agencies regarding the described goals. Groups such as the Natural Science Collections Alliance, the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, the World Federation of Culture Collections, and the American Institute for Biological Sciences that advocate for the collections community and organize programming to promote initiatives, as well as educate new generations of the community, require both engagement with and support from the community to coordinate, promote, diversify, and train around the vision articulated by the ESN.

Next steps

Using these conceptual pillars as a starting point, biological collections data stakeholders can now begin the work of creating a set of action items, a timeline, metrics for measuring success, and an oversight mechanism for the implementation of the ESN by 2030. This plan will need to develop in coordination with other national and global efforts, including the European Digital Specimen initiative, which has developed alongside ESN ( https://dissco.tech/2020/03/31/what-is-a-digital-specimen). A global effort to integrate these parallel efforts and identify future strategies was initiated by the Alliance for Biodiversity Knowledge in a series of consultations, titled "Converging Digital and Extended Specimens: Towards a Global Specification for Data Integration" ( https://discourse.gbif.org/t/converging-digital-specimens-and-extended-specimens-towards-a-global-specification-for-data-integration/2394). Working nationally and internationally, we can develop a comprehensive, permanent federation of all biological collections that fulfills their mission to represent past and present life forms for scientific discovery, wise environmental policy, and a scientifically literate citizenry. For more information, updates, and opportunities to participate and contribute ideas visit https://bcon.aibs.org.

Author Biographical

Barbara Thiers is affiliated with the New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx, New York, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8613-7133). John Bates is affiliated with the Integrative Research Center, at The Field Museum, in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5809-5941). Andrew C. Bentley is affiliated with the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, in Lawrence, Kansas, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3093-1258). Linda S. Ford is affiliated with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0256-9201). David Jennings is affiliated with the Florida Museum of Natural History, at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0520-6983). Anna K. Monfils is affiliated with Central Michigan University, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3553-6430). Jennifer M. Zaspel ( zaspelj@mpm.edu) is affiliated with the Department of Zoology at the Milwaukee Public Museum, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3960-0364). James P. Collins is affiliated with the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, in Tempe, Arizona, in the United States. Manzour Hernando Hazbón is affiliated with Becton, Dickinson, and Company's Life Sciences Department, in Sparks, Maryland, in the United States. Jyotsna L. Pandey is affiliated with the American Institute of Biological Sciences, in Herndon, Virginia, in the United States ( https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8173-0424).

References

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Implementing a Community Vision for the Future of Biodiversity Collections

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Biodiversity collections, including living and preserved biological and geological specimens, are a critical resource for scientists advancing knowledge that informs challenging global issues including climate change, biodiversity conservation, and our response to pandemics such as COVID-19 (see box 1).The recently published Extended Specimen Network (ESN) report (Thiers et al.

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The ECSA Working Group "Sharing Best Practice and Building Capacity" has elaborated a best practice guideline on what constitutes good citizen science in 2015. The 10 Principles of Citizen Science have been presented at the ECSA General Assembly 2015 in Barcelona. Since then, we've put out the challenge to engage the ECSA network to translate the Principles into all languages of ECSA members.

See here how far we got and if your language is already there...

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The ECSA Working Group "Sharing Best Practice and Building Capacity" has elaborated a best practice guideline on what constitutes good citizen science in 2015. The 10 Principles of Citizen Science have been presented at the ECSA General Assembly 2015 in Barcelona.

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Turning students into citizen scientists from Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy on JSTOR

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Schools can introduce vast numbers of citizens to participatory science.Students feel more engaged in their learning by participating in genuine scientific inve...

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Can Citizen Science Save Us? | Mary Ellen Hannibal | TEDxStanford

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Citizen science for environmental policy : development of an EU-wide inventory and analysis of selected practices.

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Citizen science is the non-professional involvement of volunteers in the scientific process, whether in the data collection phase or in other phases of the research. Citizen science is a powerful tool for environmental management that has the potential to inform an increasingly complex environmental policy landscape and to meet the growing demands from society for more participatory decision-making.

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We are a research & development enterprise working on the boundaries of environmental and social sciences with a transdisciplinary approach.

Projects

Empowering Youth And Cocreating Social Innovations And Policymaking Through Youth-focused Citizen Social Science

YOUCOUNT aims to generate new knowledge and innovations to increase the social inclusion of youth at risk of exclusion across Europe through cocreative youth citizen social science (CSS).

Collaborative Agri-food Chains

Driving Innovation in Territorial Food Systems and Improving Outcomes for Producers and Consumers.

Co-Create Change in Research Funding and Performing

Co-Change will apply an innovative systemic approach to boost the transformative capacity and leadership for research.

Contracts2.0

Agriculture can deliver a variety of environmental public goods and ecosystem services. Often, however, the use of agricultural landscapes prioritizes the provision of private goods which also contributes to environmental degradation. To address this imbalance, targeted policy instruments are required to ensure that public goods are provided at the level desired by society.

News

Easy Peasy Legume Recipes for kids

Black-eyed bean salad with tuna, Scottish lentil soup or apple chickpea cake - just a couple of very easy recipes from our legume cookbook.

Legumes, or „pulses", are a cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to animal protein, providing several micro- and macronutrients. However, while beans, lentils and Co. have always been enjoying great popularity in oriental and North African countries, the consumption in Europe does not comply with the nutritional recommendations. With this book, we aim to raise legumes' popularity among children and their parents by showing how easily delicious legume dishes can be prepared.

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We are a research & development enterprise working on the boundaries of environmental and social sciences with a transdisciplinary approach. YOUCOUNT aims to generate new knowledge and innovations to increase the social inclusion of youth at risk of exclusion across Europe through cocreative youth citizen social science (CSS).

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D-NOSES Project | Distributed Network for Odour Sensing Empowerment and Sustainability

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Citizen science empowers people, particularly by giving them the currency of power - data.

E.g.
https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2021/03/unfinished-battle-drinking-water-security-post-poverty-rural-china/
This one is a brilliant story - citizens approached scientists and helped collect and analyse data, and subsequently used it as evidence to force the government to acknowledge the issue. This paper is phenomenal - if you can't get it and want to read it let me know.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1070496518794796

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This is a free course of 1.5 hours for citizen science practitioners looking to employ 'Train the Trainer' within their project or activity. Train the Trainer (TTT) is a learning method that equips people with the skills and understanding of a project, in order to deliver training, programmes or projects to others. No prior knowledge of the TTT technique or strategy are needed.

1. Understand what 'Train the Trainer' is and how it can benefit citizen science projects

2. The fundamental components of a TTT course

3. How to plan the learning journey for their own TTT course

4. The key considerations to make if they wish to utilise TTT methodologies

The enrolment key to this course is: trainthetrainer

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This is a free course of 1.5 hours for citizen science practitioners looking to employ 'Train the Trainer' within their project or activity. Train the Trainer (TTT) is a learning method that equips people with the skills and understanding of a project, in order to deliver training, programmes or projects to others.

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Encounters in Citizen Science - The European conference for citizen and participatory science 2020 in Trieste, Italy.

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Citizen Science Projects - Österreich forscht

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Tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires high-quality, timely and accessible data, often in areas where very little data exists.

At the same time, the SDGs demand public engagement, not only to keep up pressure on governments and businesses to take action, but also to generate the societal transformations required to bring the goals within reach. Citizen science could make important contributions in both of these areas.

This brief introduces the concept of citizen science and discusses how it could support the implementation and monitoring of SDGs. It also sets out some of the challenges of this approach. It includes concrete examples of how citizen science could be applied to the SDGs. The brief draws upon a decade of experience at SEI of working with citizen science approaches.

Download the brief (1.9 MB)

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How could citizen science support the SDGs?

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Tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires high-quality, timely and accessible data, often in areas where very little data exists. At the same time, the SDGs demand public engagement, not only to keep up pressure on governments and businesses to take action, but also to generate the societal transformations required to bring the goals within reach.

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Haklay, M., Fraisl, D., Greshake Tzovaras, B., Hecker, S., Gold, M., Hager, G., ... Vohland, K. (2020, December 31). Contours of citizen science: a vignette study. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/6u2ky

Haklay, Muki, et al. "Contours of Citizen Science: A Vignette Study." SocArXiv, 31 Dec. 2020. Web.

Haklay, Muki, Dilek Fraisl, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Susanne Hecker, Margaret Gold, Gerid Hager, Luigi Ceccaroni, et al. 2020. "Contours of Citizen Science: A Vignette Study." SocArXiv. December 31. doi:10.31235/osf.io/6u2ky.
Get more citations

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Contours of citizen science: a vignette study

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Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature - for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered as citizen science activity.

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Citizen science: Chandra Clarke at TEDxChathamKent

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Specialising in: - Citizen Observatories and Citizen Science - Co-creation and hands-on STEM Learning - Creative Collaboration & Hack Days - Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Corporate Venturing - Mobile Applications and the Mobile Web - Community Building, Engagement & Social Media Public Speaking: OSCON, MozFest, Over the Air, Glazed, Native Summit, CDT Festival of Science, Hacked.io, Wearable Technology Show, CES, 3GSM (MWC), Mobile Monday, Digital Money Forum, the Anjoman Society, Minibar, UKTI Business Essentials....

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On January 27th, 2021 we organised the first public CoAct webinar: Co-shaping evaluation in Citizen Science? Towards more participatory approaches in evaluation of Citizen Science in cooperation with ECSA and EU-Citizen.Science.

Anna Cigarini (University of Barcelona, CoAct)

Johannes Jäger (IEA Paris)

Barbara Kieslinger (ZSI, CoAct)

Katja Mayer (ZSI - CoAct, University of Vienna)

Obialunanma Nnaobi (Vilsquare)

Teresa Schäfer (ZSI, CoAct)

Katie Richards- Schuster (University of Michigan)

Click to jump to section:

Citizen Science is a means of bridging science and society. In addition to the generation of scientific knowledge, Citizen Science activities are particularly well-equipped to respond to societally relevant questions, contribute to science communication and foster scientific literacy in society. While all these aspects are highly relevant for citizen engagement, empowerment and social innovation, they are rarely evaluated in a coherent way. Current evaluation activities in Citizen Science tend to focus on scientific aims, data reliability, and at most the socio-ecological relevance of the results. In the case of projects with a more accentuated educational goal, these are complemented by an assessment of the learning gains at the level of individual participants. Wider societal and political implications are hardly ever assessed, which is exacerbated by the fact that they are notoriously hard to measure.

During the discussions at the 2020 ECSA Conference, it became clear that there are already a lot of evaluation instruments available - including digital ones - and that some of them also enable participatory dimensions. However, it was reported that few of these instruments are adopted, if any at all. Is it because they are too little known? Is it because it is so difficult to create content-independent, digital environments that enable participatory evaluation for many domains and research questions? Or is it because evaluation is often tacked on to ensure compliance, instead of being a central part of research design? This webinar is dedicated to discussing strategies, formats and tools for participatory evaluation with a special focus on co-evaluation.

Co-evaluation is a form of participatory evaluation that initiates the conversation on expectations, objectives and impact already at the start of a project or initiative, either when the program or research design is co-created with different stakeholders or at the latest when the participation of actors is negotiated. The main difference between co-evaluation and conventional types of research evaluation is that participants are involved in the decision on project goals and evaluation instruments.

Participatory evaluation is an approach that aims at giving voice to the stakeholders of an intervention in its evaluation design, process and results. This webinar will shed light on the specificities of this methodology, as well as challenges and opportunities related to its application in citizen science. The aim of the webinar is to furthermore provide an overview on co-evaluation as a strategy and to discuss which respective approaches and options have been available for a long time in participatory research and citizen science, how they have been received, what opportunities they have opened up, what obstacles have been overcome, but also what we can learn from them for the future.

After an introduction and an overview about the state of the art of evaluation (participatory and non-participatory) in citizen science, core principles of co-evaluation will be presented. Experts will then discuss their experiences on a panel, with a special focus on how to approach participants as evaluators, current challenges in times of crisis and physical distancing, and resulting digital options for more participation in evaluation.

This webinar is targeted towards researchers, evaluators, project designers, and communicators working in a participatory research and citizen science context. The objective of co-evaluation is not only to promote discussion and learning for the scientific dimension of a project, it should also promote a project's impact including change in the living environments of project participants. Thus the discussions - for example how to best approach participants as evaluators -are useful to people involved in citizen science, program design, policy, and planning.

Participatory evaluation in citizen science, co-evaluation, how to approach participants as evaluators, social impact

The guiding principle of the panel was to bring together different horizons of experience. Because the majority of evaluation approaches in Citizen Science are still primarily top down and ex-post, we invited people from diverse fields to join the conversation on participatory evaluation with their experiences and share their particular perspectives on the issue. These backgrounds include programme evaluation, youth work and social work, philosophy of science, and citizen social science. With our panelists sharing how they co-design their evaluation activities, we wanted to highlight the already existing body of knowledge, including the various benefits and limitations they have already come across.

Because an hour of discussion only allowed us to touch on the variety of important experiences, many interesting aspects were addressed only shortly and not in the detail owed to them. In the following, we summarise the central themes that emerged from the conversation, some of which we broadened with additional information and sources.

Participatory evaluation and co-evaluation: Preconditions and aims

The panelists were united by the experience that participatory evaluation made both research processes and programme design more robust, but that it did not necessarily make it easier. Such evaluations require extensive preparation, commitment of time and resources, as well as a willingness to "get down to the nitty-gritty," i.e., to open up science in such a way that feedback can be incorporated directly into the process.

Furthermore, it is necessary to plan for capacity building, in the sense of creating a baseline of skills and a communication culture that enables participatory evaluation in the first place. Capacity building may include trainings, where participants learn about processes, methodologies, and about how to make sense of these in line with their own expectations and potential impacts. They may also be instructed in valuation processes, reflecting their values and norms in relation to the project and its objectives. Among other things, this has the double benefit of sensitising participants as well as the involved academic scientists to multi-perspectival approaches. It is also a way of addressing the fact that deliberative processes do not always lead to consensus, nor should they. As Johannes put it, integrating different standpoints and still moving forward with a process enables a " collective intelligence," and in turn cooperation and collective action, that is not possible nor valued in a traditional research or evaluation process. Even more, such a deliberative approach directly contradicts the traditional scientific efficiency logic, as they take a lot of time, are highly complex, and do not necessarily end with consensus, or a fixed output for that matter. However, integrating different forms and formats of expertise and authenticity and being open to the diversity of actors means enabling their lived experience to inform a more comprehensive evaluation process, and in turn facilitate a democratisation of knowledge and more sustainable change. As Obialunanma pointed out, experience shows that the more stakeholders with varying backgrounds are involved in the evaluation, the more validity is ascribed to the results, while it also creates shared ownership of such processes and their outcomes. Stakeholders also bring invaluable field-knowledge to the table that otherwise would be inaccessible, which contributes to the overall quality of the process. In a similar vein, Johannes pointed out that, contrary to the disinterested, neutral, or objective ideal of science, it does matter who does the research.

Another aspect that feeds into the complexity of participatory processes in general and co-evaluation in particular is the question of how to deal with shifting expectations and evolving project goals in practice, as solutions need to be specific to the context they are employed in. One dimension of this balancing act is sensitising all participants - academic and non-academic - to existing power relationships, and to address such relations throughout the participatory process. As academic scientists and facilitators, it is imperative to create safe spaces for participation, to realise when to step back and let our participants take the lead, but also when we are needed to step back in, in a dynamic process much like a dance, as Katie called it. Power must be shared for a participatory process of any kind to be successful. Another, closely related dimension is building and nurturing trust between the diverse actors in the process. A carefully designed co-evaluation helps to create robust and trusting relationships, even if it takes time and resources to understand the scope and modalities of participation that each actor feels comfortable with. This also means introducing the concept of evaluation itself with care: Our panelists describe their encounters with scepticism towards evaluative practices, as participants thought they were being evaluated themselves. Thus, when participants become co-evaluators, it is key to explain how they may co-shape the evaluation process to help ease them in. It might also be good to use less loaded terminology, such as "reflection", "impact design", and so on. The question of what language to employ and how must also be considered more generally, as language might form a barrier to entry that excludes important stakeholders from a co-evaluation. The same holds true for methodologies, which must be chosen according to the specificities of the participants as well as the evaluation process. This is especially pertinent as current requirements regarding social distancing due to the pandemic necessitate many projects to reconsider approaches for digital spaces that were initially designed for physical interactions. This fundamentally recontextualises the digital divide as an obstacle to equal participation, when online activities are often the only interactions allowed. Thus, the question of how to reach populations that don't have access, or feel less comfortable using digital technologies, needs to be considered. Answers might be to rely not only on digital communication, and if digital technologies are employed, to keep them low threshold and low bandwidth. Finally, the tools to be employed need to be carefully chosen, tested, and adapted or dropped where necessary and sensible. Anna, for instance, gave the example of sending out physical research diaries to collect participant inputs and bridge the digital divide. In any case, the quality of the interaction as well as the materials produced needs to be monitored closely when transferring activities intended for physical interaction to a digital sphere, and there should always be time and space for feedback.

Generally speaking, achieving a trusting, respectful and sustainable collaboration is much easier if stakeholder engagement is continuous and sustainable, and sought from the very beginning of an endeavour. In this regard, it is also important to think about valuation and rewards for efforts spent in a co-evaluation. In terms of remuneration, this might mean providing "stipends" as recognition for both effort and time. Such contributions might enable participation in the first place, as it frees co-evaluators who have responsibilities as providers to their families, for instance. Other benefits that co-evaluation might bring include more usable and sustainable outputs that benefit a community, more visibility and stronger community processes, and the multiplication of efforts through the participants. However, harkening back to the shifting expectation touched on above, it is important to actively engage with expectations, hopes and needs that might arise from participatory evaluation activities. Otherwise, hard-earned trust might be damaged unnecessarily.

Responding to a question from the audience, the panelists also discussed how best to establish participatory approaches to evaluation in Citizen Science and to gain more visibility and generate more recognition. Katie reported that the installment of a topical interest group ("TIG") in the learned society helped a lot in that regard. Through TIGs, it was possible to organise sessions at conferences and with that bringing stakeholders from participatory evaluation exercises into the academic field to present their positions and experiences. In a similar vein, Obialuanma suggested to present evidence that participatory evaluation works, share best practices and through this capture the attention of the field. Johannes would like to see further visibility of participatory evaluation practices in the rest of science, as it is a very active field of research that gives answers where elsewhere there's a lot of complaining. However, he advised not to expect too much, as Citizen Science and traditional research projects operate under very different logics. Furthermore, he points out that participatory evaluation makes sense especially for projects that have been co-designed. For other formats, such an approach would probably not be justified, since the necessary channels to collect feedback, for example, do not exist during the project.

All the topics addressed here form new starting points for possible deepening in terms of operationalisation. We will take up some of them and examine them in more detail in the near future, for example in further workshops in the context of Citizen Science conferences. (coming up: Citizen Science Association workshop series in May 2021).

Questions to ask when designing and implementing a participatory evaluation

How can we best create environments for deliberative processes to tap into "collective intelligence"?

How do we ensure the dialogues remain open, inclusive and fair?

How do we design the participation so that also marginalized voices can take part?

How to best monitor and use the shifting expectations and the evolving project goals in co-created settings?

How to best incorporate feedback into the process?

How to best systematise the many different forms and formats of input from co-evaluation?

How is the quality of the approaches affected by going digital?

Which are the best tools to employ, both offline and online?

Digital divide: how to be inclusive by not relying solely on digital communication?

Participatory research with young people is important because young people are experts in their lives, and their lived experience can and must shape knowledge developed about them and their communities.

Katie Richards-Schuster, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Minor Programs at the University of Michigan School of Social Work in Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Her research focuses on understanding the strategies and approaches for engaging young people in communities, the contexts and environments that facilitate youth engagement across settings, and the impact of youth participation in creating community change. She has worked in and with communities to promote youth participation and has led national and global efforts to increase youth voice in research and evaluation. She is a leading scholar in using participatory research and evaluation approaches with young people and communities and is the former co-chair of the Youth Focused Evaluation TIG within the American Evaluation Association.
https://ssw.umich.edu/faculty/profiles/tenure-track/kers

I realized early that having (all) stakeholders contribute to designing and implementing programme M&E systems leads to better understanding of the intervention, strengthens ownership, improves accountability and gives voice to the most vulnerable. The stakeholders own the process and are "Champions" in its implementation.
Obialunanma Nnaobi is a development practitioner whose work combines elements of research, strategy and advocacy to support good governance causes, innovative use of technology and the empowerment of women and youth. As Co-founder at Vilsquare, she works with a wide range of partners to deliver on pan-African solutions to the continent's infrastructural challenges. She has held key positions in multi-stakeholder initiatives in Nigeria like the Open Government Partnership (OGP) where she supports diverse stakeholders to collaboratively achieve shared accountability objectives and development targets. Twitter: @nmannaobi @vilsquare
https://vilsquare.org/makershub/

We must move away from metric madness, from our obsession with outcomes, towards a process-oriented form of evaluation that is tightly integrated with teaching, mentoring, and facilitation.

Johannes Jaeger is an evolutionary systems biologist and philosopher. He is interested in developing a theory of knowledge that is tailored to open science, inspired by his work on organismic agency and innovation in biological evolution. He is the current D'Alembert Research Chair at the Université Paris-Saclay and the Institut d'Études Avancées (IEA) de Paris, and associate faculty at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) Vienna. Twitter: @yoginho
www.johannesjaeger.eu

In citizen science we need evaluation that matters.
Katja Mayer is a sociologist at the University of Vienna, Austria, who works at the interface of science, technology and society. Her research examines the interactions between social science methods and their public spheres, focusing on the cultural, ethical and socio-technical challenges at the interface of computer science, social sciences and society. In addition, she is Senior Scientist at the Center for Social Innovation in Vienna, ZSI and Associate Researcher at the University of Vienna's 'Governance of Digital Practices' platform. Twitter: @katjamat

Teresa Schäfer studied Economics at the University of Vienna. She is senior researcher at ZSI and focuses her work on participation processes in digital social innovations and the assessment of their impact. Teresa has been leading the consultation process for the development of the Citizen Science Whitepaper for Europe and is work package leader for evaluation and impact assessment in several citizen science projects (e.g. CAPTOR, CoAct, EU-Citizen.Science). Teresa has many years of experience in participatory methods for design, evaluation and impact assessment, involving a broad range of citizens, like retired people, or migrants, in research projects in the 6th/7th FP and H2020.

Webinar Documentation PDF (incl. references)

Webinar Recording

Webinar Transcript PDF

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On January 27th, 2021 we organised the first public CoAct webinar: Co-shaping evaluation in Citizen Science? Towards more participatory approaches in evaluation of Citizen Science in cooperation with ECSA and EU-Citizen.Science. Click to jump to section: Citizen Science is a means of bridging science and society.

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Sign up and stay tuned! Via our newsletter we share all our news & events! Subscribe now! Cos4Cloud, a European Horizon 2020 project to boost citizen science technologies We are developing eleven technological services to improve citizen observatories by helping them to increase the quantit

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CS case study: Platic Pirates

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Plastic Pirates - The Ocean Starts Here!

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Welcome to the platform for sharing Citizen Science projects, resources, tools, and training

The static part of the platform has recently been translated into 11 languages. Do you want to help with translation? Please click here

Projects

174 results in Projects , click here to see all of them

Resources

101 results in Resources , click here to see all of them

Training

25 results in Training , click here to see all of them

Organisations

117 results in Organisations , click here to see all of them

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Welcome to the platform for sharing Citizen Science projects, resources, tools, and training The static part of the platform has recently been translated into 11 languages. Do you want to help with translation?

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LEARN Citsci - UC Davis School of Education

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Welcome to the homepage of the LEARNCitSci research study. The Learning and Environmental science Agency Research Network ...

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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science

The characteristics of citizen science defined in the documents in this repository are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. They attempt to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set. The explanation notes provide more discussion about how these characteristics were created and what they mean in practice.

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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science

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The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science The characteristics of citizen science defined in the documents in this repository are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. They attempt to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set.

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Community-based ecological monitoring (CBM) or participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) and research is the process of integrating public/community participation in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, changes or trends in the natural environment that occur in a particular ecosystem. The relationship between conservation and community involvement is central to these concepts because for conservation efforts to be maximally successful and sustained over the long-term there has to be involvement and ownership at the local or community level.

CBM/PME can focus on the biotic and abiotic parameters of the environment, identify and determine causal relationships and attempts to determine anthropogenic and natural impacts as well as the outcomes of management interventions. This information is important in guiding adaptive management. CBM enables stakeholders (community) to recognise the negative ecological effects of their activities at an early stage and to adapt their actions.

These processes require early and continuous consultation with members of the community who have a stake in their natural resources and are interested in monitoring and conservation efforts. The basic elements of CBM include having clearly defined goals and objectives for monitoring; participatory design of a monitoring plan (including selection of appropriate monitoring sites, monitoring protocols, indicators for monitoring and determination of the frequency of monitoring); baseline data collection; data analysis; feedback and critical evaluation of the monitoring methodology.

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Community-based ecological monitoring (CBM) or participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) and research is the process of integrating public/community participation in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, changes or trends in the natural environment that occur in a particular ecosystem.

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An Ecosystem of Citizen Observatories for Environmental Monitoring

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Communities of Practice Knowledge Base Events Latest News See more WeObserve on Twitter Meet the WeObserve Consortium

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Helping scientists collect important data

Anya, an indigenous Siberian girl, sees her world literally melting away due to warming caused by the developed world's CO2 emissions. Anya joins Arctic scientist Max Holmes' research team to learn, and teach her schoolmates about, global warming.

Curriculum for all ages:
Download the complete curriculum as a PDF >

Thank you to Dawn Communications and Carol L. Malnor for allowing us to post a chapter from A Teacher's Guide to How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate Lessons, Resources, and Guidelines about Global Warming by Carol L. Malnor.

The complete Guide is available in both print and ebook formats. Print edition ($8.95) is available from booksellers of your choice or from Dawn Publications, www.dawnpub.com. Ebook edition ($7.60) is available from www.DedicatedTeacher.com.

The book How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch is also available in both print and ebook formats from your favorite bookseller, like Amazon.
This film is not available in high definition.

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Young Voices for the Planet | Award-Winning Film Series and Civic Engagement & Democracy Curriculum | Anya: Citizen-Scientist in Siberia

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Anya, an indigenous Siberian girl, sees her world literally melting away due to warming caused by the developed world's CO2 emissions. Anya joins Arctic scientist Max Holmes' research team to learn, and teach her schoolmates about, global warming. Curriculum for all ages: Download the complete curriculum as a PDF > Thank you to Dawn Communications and Carol L.

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Observatorio de la Ciencia Ciudadana en España

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Observatorio de la
Ciencia Ciudadana
en España

Iniciativas, recursos y experiencias para conocer mejor el estado de la ciencia ciudadana en España

Añade tu proyecto y comparte tus conocimientos con la comunidad.

INFORME DEL OBSERVATORIO NACIONAL DE LA CIENCIA CIUDADANA EN ESPAÑA.

Dejamos para su descarga y consulta el informe del Observatorio de la Ciencia Ciudadana en España, que repasa la actividad del observatorio y los agentes implicados en la ciencia ciudadana - gestores de proyectos, instituciones y científicos ciudadanos- durante el plazo que va desde abril de 2019 a noviembre de 2020.

ÚLTIMAS INICIATIVAS AÑADIDAS AL OBSERVATORIO

Animales, Biodiversidad, Biología, Ecología y Medioambiente, Educación, Gestión de Recursos Naturales, Insectos y Polinizadores, Naturaleza y Aire Libre, Océanos, Agua, Marino y Terrestre, Pájaros, Seguimiento de Especies a largo plazo

ENTREVISTAS DE CIENCIA CIUDADANA

RECURSOS DEL OBSERVATORIO

ACTUALIDAD DE LA CIENCIA CIUDADANA EN ESPAÑA

El objetivo principal del Observatorio es recopilar los proyectos de ciencia ciudadana llevados a cabo en España, con el fin de darles difusión y de crear una red de colaboración y participación entre los distintos agentes implicados: científicos profesionales, científicos ciudadanos, gestores, dinamizadores, políticos, divulgadores y comunicadores de la ciencia.

Además, el Observatorio busca aumentar y facilitar el conocimiento sobre la ciencia ciudadana a través de la recopilación de recursos y de la realización de diversos eventos junto a la necesaria investigación.

La ciencia ciudadana no puede definirse de un modo estático puesto que se trata de un concepto en evolución. Continuamente surgen nuevas áreas de conocimiento, nuevas formas de involucrarse y nuevas comunidades de práctica. Poner en el mapa toda esta creciente actividad permite entender mejor el todo a partir de las muchas y diversas partes.
El Observatorio cuenta desde 2016 con la colaboración de la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) - Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, a través de su convocatoria anual de ayudas para el desarrollo de la cultura científica, tecnológica y de la innovación.

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Observatorio de la Ciencia Ciudadana en España

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Iniciativas, recursos y experiencias para conocer mejor el estado de la ciencia ciudadana en España Añade tu proyecto y comparte tus conocimientos con la comunidad. INFORME DEL OBSERVATORIO NACIONAL DE LA CIENCIA CIUDADANA EN ESPAÑA.

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It seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. To view this site, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options and try again.

Jump to main content

Check out our Citizen Science Toolkit, designed to help educators integrate citizen science projects into classroom curricula or afterschool programming.

It contains resources-including lessons, readings, and worksheets-to help communicate the value of citizen science to students and cultivate their sense of empowerment and impact when performing science investigations.

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There's bound to be a citizen science project that's right for you!

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Getting it right, a guide to improve inclusion in multistakeholder forums

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This guide explains how to operationalize inclusion of women, Indigenous Peoples and other under-represented groups in multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs). Around the world, MSFs have been promoted and adopted as decision making, consultation and dialogue platforms to bring together diverse constituencies to share ideas and formulate decisions in a more open and equitable.

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Citizen science is booming.

More and more non-professional science enthusiasts are lending their own time to help decode the vast amounts of data produced in modern scientific studies.

Online platforms such as Zooniverse host huge citizen science projects - from analysis of cyclone patterns to the classification of galaxies - with more than 800,000 contributors taking part worldwide.

But public involvement in science is far from a new phenomenon.

In the 19 th century, periodical science journals were filled with laypeople's submissions - and their observations of plants and animals were immensely useful to Charles Darwin.

Naturally, the periodicals of the Victorian era had to find ways of collating and managing large numbers of submissions from different sources.

And the methods they developed could be useful to the citizen science platforms of today according to University of Leicester academic Dr Gowan Dawson.

Dr Dawson, an expert on the cultural history of Victorian science in the University's School of English and Victorian Studies Centre, is co-director a major research project which aims to investigate citizen science in the 19 th and 21 st centuries.

"Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries" is a collaboration between the University of Leicester, the University of Oxford, the Royal Society, the Natural History Museum and the Royal College of Surgeons. It has been funded by a £1,950,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The researchers will look at how communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science could help shape modern structures for how volunteers can engage with professional science.

Researchers will draw on historic collections of largely forgotten science journals of the nineteenth century contained in the Natural History Museum, the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal Society.

They will also work with these institutions' science communities, addressing questions about the creation and circulation of knowledge in the digital age, and looking at innovative ways of breaking through the public/professional divide.

Dr Dawson said: "When Darwin was developing his theories of evolution he read avidly in popular natural history magazines and sought out information from an army of almost 2000 correspondents.

"Such engagement with a wide public in the construction of science became increasingly difficult with the development of professional, and highly specialised science, but the emergence of 'citizen science' projects has suggested a new way forward.

"With the creation of vast data sets in contemporary science, there is a need for a new army of volunteers to help classify and analyse the information.

"The Zooniverse platform, started in 2007 with 'Galaxy Zoo', now has over 800,000 participants who contribute to projects from astrophysics to climate science. Significant discoveries have already been made by these volunteers in the field of astronomy.

"Yet, the structures by which these volunteers might engage with professional science, and through which scientists themselves might draw upon their findings, are not clear, and researchers on the project have been turning to nineteenth-century models of communication to find ways of harnessing this huge popular interest in order to increase the rate of scientific progress.

"The information revolution in our own age has parallels in the nineteenth century which saw an explosion of print, and journal publishing - in 1800 there were only around 100 science periodicals, but by 1900 this had jumped to 10,000 worldwide.

"The project brings together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, looking at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice.

"The research is timely since the digital revolution, and open-access publishing, are about to change forever the processes and forms of scientific communication and exchange."

The Principal Investigator of the project is Professor Sally Shuttleworth, of the English Faculty at Oxford University, with Dr Dawson and Dr Chris Lintott, of the Department of Physics at Oxford University, as Co-Investigators.
Ends Note to editors
For more information, please contact Dr Gowan Dawson via gd31@le.ac.uk
About the AHRC
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds world-class, independent researchers in a wide range of subjects: ancient history, modern dance, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, English literature, design, the creative and performing arts, and much more. This financial year the AHRC will spend approximately £98m to fund research and postgraduate training in collaboration with a number of partners. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please go to: www.ahrc.ac.uk

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How today's citizen scientists can learn from Darwin and the Victorians

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Citizen science is booming. More and more non-professional science enthusiasts are lending their own time to help decode the vast amounts of data produced in modern scientific studies. Online platforms such as Zooniverse host huge citizen science projects - from analysis of cyclone patterns to the classification of galaxies - with more than 800,000 contributors taking part worldwide.

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LandSense technologies are deployed across various themes to illustrate the potential of Citizen Observatories to tackle environmental monitoring issues

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Enjoy the holidays and help birds. Photo by Camilla Cerea/Audubon.

Monitoring birds is an essential part of protecting them. But tracking the health of the world's 10,000 bird species is an immense challenge. That's where you come in.

Scientists need hundreds of thousands of people to report what they're seeing in backyards, neighborhoods, and wild places around the world. No matter what aspect of bird watching you love most, there's a citizen-science project that needs you.

Whether you want to participate once a year or once a day, here are a few of our favorite projects to get involved with:

Once-a-Year Bird Counts

A Red-bellied Woodpecker visits a feeder and is recorded by a Project FeederWatch participant. Photo by Bob Vuxinic/PFW.

Great Backyard Bird Count: A 4-day count held over a long weekend in February. Watch birds in your backyard or anywhere else, and be part of this 20+ year tradition and help provide scientists with a snapshot of bird populations. Participate from anywhere in the world. More about the GBBC.

Global Big Days: Each year in May and October, tens of thousands of people go birding on a single day and enter their records into eBird. The final tally often exceeds 7,000 species-nearly three-quarters of the world's bird species in a single day. You can participate from anywhere in the world. More about Global Big Day.

Christmas Bird Count: The citizen-science project that started it all, more than a century ago. It's now an event held around the world, involving single-day counts between December 14 and January 5 each season. Birders count every individual bird they see or hear all day, traveling in organized groups that can include both experienced birders and beginners. Chances are there's a count near you-find out more via Audubon.

Extended Counts

In eBird's first 10 years of existence, bird watchers contributed 100 million observations. It took only 2 more years to reach the next 100 million.

eBird: Report birds from anywhere, anytime. eBird keeps track of your lists, gives you a place to store photos and sounds, and allows you to share lists with other birders. Its suite of tools also help you find new places to explore and learn where target birds are-all while collecting critical data for science. Learn how to use eBird with our free course or explore eBird on your own.

Project FeederWatch: For more than 3 decades, FeederWatchers have counted birds at their feeders from November through April. That long-term data helps scientists monitor the abundance and distribution of birds, including changes from habitat, disease, and climate. U.S. and Canada only. Learn more about Project FeederWatch.

North American Breeding Bird Survey: Begun in 1966, this is the survey that fuels population trend estimates for 420 bird species in the U.S. and Canada. Each year during the height of the breeding season, skilled bird watchers count birds along roadsides. Find out more from the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the Canadian Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Research Center.

International Shorebird Survey. Organized by Manomet, this project involves volunteers counting shorebirds during spring and fall migrations-crucial opportunities during the year to learn about the movements and numbers of these remote-breeding birds. To date the survey has recorded more than 100,000 counts in 47 states as well as in Central and South America. More about the International Shorebird Survey.

Studying Nesting Success

NestWatch: Help measure nature's success. Learn how to find and monitor bird nests without disturbing the nesting birds. Then record data on species, eggs, and young. Your contributions help scientists understand how climate change, urbanization, and land use affect breeding birds. U.S. and Canada only. More about NestWatch.

Nest Quest Go! You can be part of this unique project without even going outside. Our goal is to transcribe nesting details from a trove of more than 300,000 cards dating back to the 1960s. The valuable data they contain will help us understand the historical nesting patterns of North American birds. More about Nest Quest Go!

Nature in Cities and Towns

Celebrate Urban Birds: Founded in 2007, Celebrate Urban Birds is a year-round project that reaches diverse urban audiences who do not already participate in science. The project has partnered with more than 12,000 community-based organizations, distributed more than 500,000 educational kits, and awarded dozens of mini-grants. Participants count 16 focal bird species, range in age from preschoolers to senior citizens, and often have little or no prior experience with birds. More about Celebrate Urban Birds.

Contributing Photos and Audio

Macaulay Library: If you take photos of birds or record the sounds they make, you can contribute them to the Macaulay Library and help document the planet's bird life. The Macaulay Library is a multimedia scientific archive for research, education, and conservation containing more than audio for more than 80% of the world's birds, and more than 10 million photographs. More about the Macaulay Library.

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Citizen Science: Be Part of Something Bigger

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Monitoring birds is an essential part of protecting them. But tracking the health of the world's 10,000 bird species is an immense challenge. That's where you come in. Scientists need hundreds of thousands of people to report what they're seeing in backyards, neighborhoods, and wild places around

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Use our handy guide to find out more about citizen science and how to get involved. ... The principal behind citizen science is to use the power of collaborative ... us on dosomethinggreat@bbc.co.uk or tweet using #​DoSomethingGreat and you ...

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Foundational Goals

1. Offer a coordinated point of entry for government, NGO, and business partners seeking to collaborate with the global citizen science community.

2. Help promote and support networks that advance citizen science, such as the citizen science Associations established in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Offer strategic guidance and support to help new networks, such as emerging Associations in Asia and Africa, form.

3. Help promote and support consortia of different citizen science projects conducting research on similar topics, such as vector-borne disease or pollution, around the world. This model allows projects to mobilize local communities while sharing good practices and data on global scales.

4. Support the collection and exchange of open and findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data by formalizing a citizen science data standard, creating a data directory, and building an open data portal.

5. Understand and track the contributions of citizen science to supporting sustainable development.

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Foundational Goals Offer a coordinated point of entry for government, NGO, and business partners seeking to collaborate with the global citizen science community. Help promote and support networks that advance citizen science, such as the citizen science Associations established in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

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Project description

NEWSERA analyses and evaluates the strategies addressed to quadruple helix stakeholders in citizen science projects as the new paradigm for science communication. NEWSERA will use a bottom-up approach to co-design strategies for selected H2020 Citizen Science projects, in order to improve their science communication practices and their impact towards each quadruple helix stakeholder group.
These strategies will be developed with the involvement of science journalists and science communicators, to propose innovative ways to open up science and innovation to society, industry and policy makers, and increase trust in science communication.

Objectives

The overall aim of NEWSERA is to show that citizen science can be used as a powerful science communication tool. Citizen science as a tool allows to: increase trust in science and in science communication; strengthen the link between science and innovation and society; and promote scientific literacy among the general public.

The specific objectives are:

1.Evaluate the current effectiveness of science communication and the perception of stakeholders participating in citizen science projects

2.Create four Science Communication Labs addressed to quadruple helix stakeholders and science journalists, in order to advance the state-of-the-art of science communication

3.Interlink data journalism principles and citizen science

4.Develop improved ways to measure and assess science communication

5.Identify good practices to ensure quality, reliability and increased trust in science communication and science

6.Produce five innovation blueprints, addressed to quadruple helix stakeholders and science journalists, to guarantee project replicability

7.Provide policy guidelines to increase trust in science communication

8.Provide new contents and methodologies for formal and informal teaching in science communication within scientific disciplines

9.Suggest new incentive mechanisms to involve academic scientists in science communication

10.Use advanced data mining techniques to provide a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of the different science communication strategies; the impact and efficiency of such strategies will be validated through the definition of KPIs

11.Communicate and disseminate the project actions to replicate NEWSERA findings and science communication strategies in citizen science projects and beyond

12.Embed and put into practice a highly inclusive engagement model

13.Embed the ethics dimension in relation to the participation of citizens in research, data protection aspects, and in relation to the perception of science and science communication of quadruple helix stakeholders

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NEWSERA analyses and evaluates the strategies addressed to quadruple helix stakeholders in citizen science projects as the new paradigm for science communication. NEWSERA will use a bottom-up approach to co-design strategies for selected H2020 Citizen Science projects, in order to improve their science communication practices and their impact towards each quadruple helix stakeholder group.

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The project brought together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, and looked at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice.

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🎥 The recording of our first webinar on #DataProtection for 🇪🇺 European #journalists is finally available on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned to be updated on the upcoming training activities:
🔗 https://youtu.be/0aMv99sb69s

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Panelfit - Participatory Approaches to a New Ethical and Legal Framework for Information and Communication Technologies

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🎥 The recording of our first webinar on #DataProtection for 🇪🇺 European #journalists is finally available on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned to be updated on the upcoming training activities: 🔗 https://youtu.be/0aMv99sb69s

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Publish Your Reports

Share papers in OSF Preprints or a community-based preprint provider, so others can find and cite your work. Track impact with metrics like downloads and view counts.

OSF is a game changer for those wanting to effectively share their research process in the spirit of collaboration.

Patricia Ayala Research Services Librarian
University of Toronto See her research

OSF is indispensable in helping me create reproducible research pipelines from preregistration through data collection and analysis. Its versatility makes it my one-stop shop for projects. The Dropbox integration effortlessly transforms my existing local workflow to public repository.

Maya Mathur Department of Epidemiology
Harvard University See her research

Because SocArXiv is a not-for-profit organization, researchers can be assured that they are sharing their research in an environment where access, inclusivity, and preservation, rather than profit, will remain at the heart of the mission. A great benefit of partnering with OSF is that this application is a free public good.

Philip Cohen SocArXiv papers See his research

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Share papers in OSF Preprints or a community-based preprint provider, so others can find and cite your work. Track impact with metrics like downloads and view counts. OSF is a game changer for those wanting to effectively share their research process in the spirit of collaboration.

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Doing It Together Science has come to an end

Within 3 years, DITOs carried out over 860 events and reached over 500,000 across Europe.

Read more...

From Doing It Together Science to EU-Citizen.Science - Passing along our social media accounts

DITOs is nearing the end of its three years. We've build up some lovely communities online, and this is what will happen to keep them going

Read more...

DITOs final event liveblogging (3): Environmental Monitoring

We're liveblogging our final event - this is the third session, Environmental Monitoring, and closing remarks for the day.

Read more...

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Within 3 years, DITOs carried out over 860 events and reached over 500,000 across Europe. Read more... DITOs is nearing the end of its three years. We've build up some lovely communities online, and this is what will happen to keep them going Read more...

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Crowd4SDG is a three-year Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action supported by the European Commission's Science with and for Society (SwafS) programme. Through an innovation cycle called GEAR (Gather, Evaluate, Accelerate, Refine), the transdisciplinary Crowd4SDG consortium of six partners will promote the development of citizen science projects aimed at tackling the SDG's, with a focus on climate action.

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About this Journal

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by Ubiquity Press on behalf of the Citizen Science Association. The journal focuses on advancing the global field of citizen science by providing a venue for citizen science researchers and practitioners to share best practices in conceiving, developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining projects that facilitate public participation in scientific endeavors in any discipline. Authors include scientists, educators, community organizers, information technologists, conservation biologists, evaluators, land-use planners, and more. Readers include anyone interested in understanding and improving practice of the growing citizen science field. As an open-access journal no fees are charged to view any part of the journal, which is supported by nominal author's fees.

The journal accepts manuscripts in several categories:

Research Articles

Review and Synthesis Papers

Case Studies

Essays

Method Papers

Meeting Reports

Editorial Content

Invited Papers

For more details, see our descriptions in More About This Journal under the About tab.

Our Author Guidelines can be found here.

2020 Reviewer Thank You

You can download a full list of all those who completed a review for Citizen Science: Theory and Practice here.

Muki Haklay, Associate Editor-in-Chief of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice

We are pleased to announce that Muki Haklay has agreed to be Associate Editor-in-Chief of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.

Muki is a Professor of Geographical Information Science at University College London and co-director of the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group. Muki is widely published, and he is an experienced member of our journal Editorial Board. Muki joined the Editorial Board shortly after the journal was launched.

One more exciting fact about Muki is that he is co-editor and author of a new book entitled Geographic Citizen Science Design: No One Left Behind that will be published in February 2021.

We are very fortunate to have Muki as Associate Editor-in-Chief. Welcome Muki!

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Citizen Science: Theory and Practice is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by Ubiquity Press on behalf of the Citizen Science Association. The journal focuses on advancing the global field of citizen science by providing a venue for citizen science researchers and practitioners to share best practices in conceiving, developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining projects that facilitate public participation in scientific endeavors in any discipline.