CITIZEN SCIENCE

CITIZEN
SCIENCE

CITIZEN SCIENCE

LIST OF CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS

WHAT IS CITIZEN SCIENCE?

CITIZEN SCIENCE ALLIANCE

10 PRINCIPLES OF CITIZEN SCIENCE

THE CROWD & THE CLOUD

CITIZEN SCIENCE LINKS

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 1

CITIZEN
SCIENCE

Citizen science (also known as crowd science, crowd-sourced science,
civic science, or networked science) is scientific research conducted,
in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists, often
by crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Formally, citizen science has been
defined as "the systematic collection and analysis of data; development
of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of
these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis".
Citizen science is sometimes called "public participation in scientific
research."

The "Green Paper on Citizen Science: Citizen Science for Europe" refers
to "the general public engagement in scientific research activities when
citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual
effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources.
Participants provide experimental data and facilities for researchers,
raise new questions and co-create a new scientific culture.

While adding value, volunteers acquire new learning and skills, and deeper
understanding of the scientific work in an appealing way. As a result of
this open, networked and trans-disciplinary scenario, science-society-policy
interactions are improved leading to a more democratic research, based on
evidence-informed decision making as is scientific research conducted, in
whole or in part, by amateur or non professional scientists."

Citizen science may be performed by individuals, teams, or networks of
volunteers. Citizen scientists often partner with professional scientists
to achieve common goals. Large volunteer networks often allow scientists
to accomplish tasks that would be too expensive or time consuming to
accomplish through other means.

Many citizen-science projects serve education and outreach goals. These
projects may be designed for a formal classroom environment or an informal
education environment such as museums.

Citizen science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 2

LIST OF
CITIZEN
SCIENCE
PROJECTS

Citizen science projects are activities sponsored by a wide variety
of organizations so average people can meaningfully contribute to
scientific research. Activities vary widely from transcribing old
ship logbooks to digitalize the data as part of the Old Weather
project to observing and counting birds at home or in the field for
eBird. Participation can be as simple as playing a computer game for
a project called EyeWire that may help scientists learn more about
retinal neurons.

List of citizen science projects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_citizen_science_projects

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 3

WHAT
IS
CITIZEN
SCIENCE?

Research often involves teams of scientists collaborating across
continents. Now, using the power of the Internet, non-specialists
are participating, too. Citizen Science falls into many categories.

A pioneering project was SETI@Home, which has harnessed the idle
computing time of millions of participants in the search for
extraterrestrial life. Citizen scientists also act as volunteer
classifiers of heavenly objects, such as in Galaxy Zoo. They make
observations of the natural world, as in The Great Sunflower Project.
And they even solve puzzles to design proteins, such as FoldIt.

What Is Citizen Science?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 4

CITIZEN
SCIENCE
ALLIANCE

What is the Citizen Science Alliance?

The CSA is a collaboration of scientists, software developers
and educators who collectively develop, manage and utilise
internet-based citizen science projects in order to further
science itself, and the public understanding of both science
and of the scientific process.

These projects use the time, abilities and energies of a
distributed community of citizen scientists who are our
collaborators.

Citizen Science Alliance
http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 5

10
PRINCIPLES OF
CITIZEN
SCIENCE

1. Citizen science projects involve citizens who actively contribute to
scientific research. Citizens can act as contributors, collaborators,
or as project leader and have a meaningful role in the research project
(they are not simply research subjects).

2. Citizen science projects have a genuine scientific question or goal,
if possible resulting from discussions between citizens and professional
scientists.

3. Citizens are encouraged to participate in multiple stages of the
scientific process, from developing the research question to co-designing
the research process, gathering and analysing data, co-evaluating the
research results and finally publishing the results for different audiences.

4. The data gathered and/or analysed are shared and made publicly available
either during or after the project, unless there are security or privacy
concerns that prevent this. If the results are published academically, where
possible this should be in an open access format.

5. Participants receive feedback from the project lead on how their contribution
adds to the project e.g. how their data will be used and what the research findings
are. This adds both reward and opportunity to learn more about the science. The more
communication and two-way engagement, the better!

6. Citizen science activities celebrate and value the contributions of the citizen,
and these are actively acknowledged in project results and publications.

7. Citizen science programmes are characterised by mutual respect and acknowledgement
of different skills and perspectives. Where possible, steering committees should
integrate both scientists and citizen delegates. The scientists and organisers should
be mindful of the power relations that exist within this social interaction.

8. Citizen science projects should be inclusive. Where possible, inclusiveness should
be proactive and not only reactive. Considerations of inclusiveness should include
(but are not limited to) level of education, gender, age, religious belief, socio-
economic factors and access to technologies.

9. Being at the frontier between science and society, citizen science programmes have
the opportunity to actively promote transdisciplinarity and links between natural and
social sciences.

10. Citizen science programmes should be evaluated for their scientific output, data
quality, and the impact on participants.

10 principles of citizen science
http://povesham.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/european-citizen-science-association-suggestion-for-10-principles-of-citizen-science/

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 6

THE CROWD &
THE CLOUD

The results are improving health and welfare, assisting in wildlife
conservation, and giving communities the power to create needed
change and help themselves.

The Crowd &; The Cloud
http://crowdandcloud.org/

BACK TO TOP

SECTION 7

CITIZEN
SCIENCE
LINKS

Australia's voice for birds
http://birdlife.org.au/projects/atlas-and-birdata/

Citizen Cyberscience Centre
http://www.citizencyberscience.net/

Citizen Cybersummit Conference
http://cybersciencesummit.org/

Citizen Science Center
http://www.citizensciencecenter.com/

Citizen Science
http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/british-science-association/citizen-science

Citizen Science
http://hubblesite.org/get_involved/citizen_science/

Citizen Science
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/citizen-science/

Citizen Science
http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Conservation/Citizen-Science.aspx

Citizen Science
http://www.audubon.org/citizenscience

Citizen Science
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/citizen-science/?ar_a=1

Citizen Science
http://www.xerces.org/citizen-science/

Citizen Science
http://learnerlog.org/tag/citizen-science-association/

Citizen Science
http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=60082

Citizen-Science.org
http://citizen-science.org/rdPage.aspx

Citizen Science Association
http://citizenscienceassociation.org/

Citizen Science Central
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit

Citizen Science Monthly
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci/

Fold It
http://fold.it.portal/

For Citizen Scientists
http://science.nasa.gov/citizen-scientists/

Galaxy Zoo
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

GeoTag-X
http://geotagx.org/

The Great Sunflower Project
http://www.greatsunflower.org/

Ibercivis Foundation
http://www.ibercivis.com/

Indigo V Expeditions
http://www.indigovexpeditions.org/

Marine Debris tracker Spreading
awareness of marine debris
http://www.marinedebris.engr.uga.edu/

More about Citizen Science at NASA
https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscientists

NASA Solve: Citizen Science,
Challenges and Prizes at NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/solve/index.html

National Research Council Canada
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/index.html

Open Scientist
http://www.openscientist.org/

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) CitizenSci
http://blogs.plos.org/citizensci/

SciStarter
http://scistarter.com/index.html

Search and Rescue Citizen Science Experiment
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/sar_cse-sar_esc/

SETI
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

UNITAR-UNOSAT
http://www.unitar.org/unosat/

What Is Citizen Science?
http://ecsa.biodiv.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/

Zooniverse
http://www.zooniverse.org/

BACK TO TOP

SCIENCE INDEX

CITIZEN SCIENCE RESOURCES

HOME

E-MAIL