Citizen Science

Citizen Science

Maria G. Mandourari

Outline What is Citizen Science Advantages of Citizen Science

Disadvantages of Citizen Science

Recommendations

Volunteers / non-professional scientists

Crowd-sourcing & Crowd-funding

Crowd Science

Crowd-sourced Science

Civic Science

Networked Science

“Public participation in scientific

research.”(Hand, E., 2010)

General public engagement Citizens actively contribute to science :

i. Intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge

ii. Tools and resources Experimental data & facilities for researchers

Raise new questions Co-create a new scientific culture

New learning & skills

Deeper understanding

The "Green Paper on Citizen Science: Citizen Science for

Europe" Open Networked Trans-disciplinary

ScienceSocietyPolicy

The "Green Paper on Citizen Science: Citizen Science for

Europe"

Democratic research Evidence-informed decision making

Public Involvement1.Consultation

2.Collaboration

3.Lay control

18th century New large-scale surveys Advances in data storage Web technology Social networking technologies

Reasons for Public Involvement in Research

Political mandate

Pursuit of ‘better’ research

EVALUATING PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

ADVANTAGES & LIMITATIONS

Citizen Science: Benefits

Scientific researchers Volunteers STEM educators Society

Citizen Science: Limitations

Public involvement : Purposeful Opportunistic Indirect

Consultation

Obtaining public’s views

quickly

Some people find

it frustrating

Collaboration

• Assessing research

participants• More active

in disseminati

ng research results

Lay-controlled research Reaching marginalized groups Addressing questions that researchers

may not consider important Developing research skills among lay

people and the professionals with whom they work

Greater commitment from public organizations to disseminate research findings

Researchers to hand over the ownership of a project

RecommendationsRecognize volunteers as research

collaboratorsEncourage development of citizen

science projects Develop an understanding of how to

“calibrate” user contributions into science data.

Study who participates in Citizen Science and what motivates them

RecommendationsMost appropriate for Citizen Science Pilot activities Assess:

whathow

RecommendationsDevelop resources

maximize learning

REFERENCES LIST"Finalizing a Definition of "Citizen Science" and

"Citizen Scientists"". OpenScientist.Hand, E. (2010). "Citizen science: People power".

Nature 466 (7307): 685–687. Kyba, Christopher C. M.; Wagner, Janna M.;

Kuechly, Helga U.; Walker, Constance E.; Elvidge, Christopher D.; Falchi, Fabio; Ruhtz, Thomas; Fischer, Jürgen; Hölker, Franz (NaN undefined NaN). "Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance". Scientific Reports 3. Bibcode:2013NatSR...3E1835K. doi:10.1038/srep01835.

Citizen Sky: http://www.citizensky.org/Oliver, S. R., Rees, R. W., Clarke-Jones, L., Milne,

R., Oakley, A. R., Gabbay, J., Stein, K., Buchanan, P. and Gyte, G. (2008), A multidimensional conceptual framework for analysing public involvement in health services research. Health Expectations, 11: 72–84.

M. Jordan Raddick, Georgia Bracey, Karen Carney, Geza Gyuk,Kirk Borne, John Wallin, Suzanne Jacoby (2009), Citizen Science: Status and Research Directions for the Coming Decade nationalacademies.org