scholarly journals When Scientists Become Social Scientists: How Citizen Science Projects Learn About Volunteers

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Darch

Online citizen science projects involve recruitment of volunteers to assist researchers with the creation, curation, and analysis of large datasets. Enhancing the quality of these data products is a fundamental concern for teams running citizen science projects. Decisions about a project’s design and operations have a critical effect both on whether the project recruits and retains enough volunteers, and on the quality of volunteers’ work. The processes by which the team running a project learn about their volunteers play a critical role in these decisions. Improving these processes will enhance decision-making, resulting in better quality datasets, and more successful outcomes for citizen science projects. This paper presents a qualitative case study, involving interviews and long-term observation, of how the team running Galaxy Zoo, a major citizen science project in astronomy, came to know their volunteers and how this knowledge shaped their decision-making processes. This paper presents three instances that played significant roles in shaping Galaxy Zoo team members’ understandings of volunteers. Team members integrated heterogeneous sources of information to derive new insights into the volunteers. Project metrics and formal studies of volunteers combined with tacit understandings gained through on- and offline interactions with volunteers. This paper presents a number of recommendations for practice. These recommendations include strategies for improving how citizen science project team members learn about volunteers, and how teams can more effectively circulate among themselves what they learn.

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 309
Author(s):  
Rhian A. Salmon ◽  
Samuel Rammell ◽  
Myfanwy T. Emeny ◽  
Stephen Hartley

In this paper, we focus on different roles in citizen science projects, and their respective relationships. We propose a tripartite model that recognises not only citizens and scientists, but also an important third role, which we call the ‘enabler’. In doing so, we acknowledge that additional expertise and skillsets are often present in citizen science projects, but are frequently overlooked in associated literature. We interrogate this model by applying it to three case studies and explore how the success and sustainability of a citizen science project requires all roles to be acknowledged and interacting appropriately. In this era of ‘wicked problems’, the nature of science and science communication has become more complex. In order to address critical emerging issues, a greater number of stakeholders are engaging in multi-party partnerships and research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. Within this context, explicitly acknowledging the role and motivations of everyone involved can provide a framework for enhanced project transparency, delivery, evaluation and impact. By adapting our understanding of citizen science to better recognise the complexity of the organisational systems within which they operate, we propose an opportunity to strengthen the collaborative delivery of both valuable scientific research and public engagement.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friederike Klan ◽  
Christopher C.M. Kyba ◽  
Nona Schulte-Römer ◽  
Helga U. Kuechly ◽  
Jürgen Oberst ◽  
...  

<p>Data contributed by citizen scientists raise increasing interest in many areas of scientific research. Increasingly, projects rely on information technology such as mobile applications (apps) to facilitate data collection activities by lay people. When developing such smartphone apps, it is essential to account for both the requirements of the scientists interested in acquiring data and the needs of the citizen scientists contributing data. Citizens and participating scientists should therefore ideally work together during the conception, design and testing of mobile applications used in a citizen science project. This will benefit both sides, as both scientists and citizens can bring in their expectations, desires, knowledge, and commitment early on, thereby making better use of the potential of citizen science. Such processes of app co-design are highly transdisciplinary, and thus pose challenges in terms of the diversity of interests, skills, and background knowledge involved.</p><p>Our “Nachtlicht-BüHNE” citizen science project addresses these issues. Its major goal is the development of a co-design process enabling scientists and citizens to jointly develop citizen science projects based on smartphone apps. This includes (1) the conception and development of a mobile application for a specific scientific purpose, (2) the design, planning and organization of field campaigns using the mobile application, and (3) the evaluation of the approach. In Nachtlicht-BüHNE, the co-design approach is developed within the scope of two parallel pilot studies in the environmental and space sciences. Case study 1 deals with the problem of light pollution. Currently, little is known about how much different light source types contribute to emissions from Earth. Within the project, citizens and researchers will develop and use an app to capture information about all types of light sources visible from public streets. Case study 2 focuses on meteors. They are of great scientific interest because their pathways and traces of light can be used to derive dynamic and physical properties of comets and asteroids. Since the surveillance of the sky with cameras is usually incomplete, reports of fireball sightings are important. Within the project, citizens and scientists will create and use the first German-language app that allows reporting meteor sightings.</p><p>We will share our experiences on how researchers and communities of citizen scientists with backgrounds in the geosciences, space research, the social sciences, computer science and other disciplines work together in the Nachtlicht-BüHNE project to co-design mobile applications. We highlight challenges that arose and present different strategies for co-design that evolved within the project accounting for the specific needs and interests of the communities involved.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Greenhill ◽  
Kate Holmes ◽  
Jamie Woodcock ◽  
Chris Lintott ◽  
Brooke D Simmons ◽  
...  

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine intrinsic forms of motivation and particular incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement on an online crowdsourced citizen science platform. The paper also investigates gamised activity (Greenhill et al., 2014) as a form of intrinsic motivation adding a sense of play to work and tasks (Xu et al., 2012). These concepts are explored through close scrutiny of the online citizen science platform Zooniverse.org. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative techniques with an interpretivist approach are used to analyse online content found within citizen science platforms, related forums and social media by examining incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement to investigate how these aspects are applied as a form of user motivation. Findings – The authors find that when users classify crowdsourced tasks voluntarily it does not matter how users are classifying as long as it is accurately. However, what does matter is why they are doing it particularly because of the complex processes that builds relationships between users and the platform. The authors present a conceptual model to enable deeper understandings of how forms of social interaction and play are motivating users contributing to citizen science project to participate in the online processes. Practical implications – The findings of this paper provide practical implications for how citizen science, and also other crowdsourcing platforms, can engage with notions of play and gamification to motivate participation. Originality/value – Using detailed examples of online content, the authors reveal how participants of the Zooniverse.org demonstrate aspects of “gamised” behaviour. The authors argue that the exploration of gaming as well as play provides evidence that contributing to citizen science projects can be both utilitarian and hedonic.


Author(s):  
Robert Stevenson ◽  
Carl Merrill ◽  
Peter Burn

Each fall from 2017 to 2019, entering Honors students at the University of Massachusetts Boston were invited to attend a 2-day retreat on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. As part of this retreat, students participated in a three-hour bioblitz using the iNaturalist platform. The educational goal of this exercise was to allow the students to observe nature and to participate in a Citizen Science project. These students were generally not science majors and had little or no experience with iNaturalist, and yet during 3 years they made over 2000 biodiversity observations, including over 5700 photographs. Using these data, we addressed the question, “Can naïve observers, using the iNaturalist platform, make useful contributions to our understanding of biodiversity?” For those unfamiliar with the iNaturalist platform, it facilitates this process by encouraging its online community of identifiers to provide species names, thus effectively integrating the collection and identification processes. Observer training: A National Park Service educational team gave groups of 50 to 75 students a 20 to 30 minute introduction to bioblitzes, how to take pictures, especially close-ups with mobile phones, and how to use the iNaturalist app. The students then headed out in one- to four-person groups to preassigned quadrants of the island for 2 to 2.5 hours of observations. Evaluation of Observations: iNaturalist evaluates observations with a three category system of “Casual”, “Needs Id” and “Research Grade”. In addition to the iNaturalist ratings we evaluated other characteristics of the observations: We tallied the number of photographs per observation and developed a rubric to score the quality of images as good, OK, or poor. We identified whether or not the observer tried to identify the species being observed, and scored observations as to whether we thought an identification to species or genus was possible. We totaled the number of observations that were identified to the species and genus level by August 1st, 2020. Finally we evaluated the spatial quality of the observations. We tallied the number of photographs per observation and developed a rubric to score the quality of images as good, OK, or poor. We identified whether or not the observer tried to identify the species being observed, and scored observations as to whether we thought an identification to species or genus was possible. We totaled the number of observations that were identified to the species and genus level by August 1st, 2020. Finally we evaluated the spatial quality of the observations. Results: Over 50% of the observations were of plants and 40% of animals, mostly arthropods and mollusks. The remaining 10% were of fungi and seaweeds. A total of 202 unique species were identified from the student bioblitzes. The proportion of species common to each year was 19%. Forty-seven percent of the observations (945) were identified to species level but only 2/3 of these (687) were confirmed by others to make them “research grade”. Fifty-eight percent of the observations included three or four images, and 31% were judged to be of good quality, 54% OK and 15% poor. We thought that the majority of the observations were identifiable to species or genus level (64%), and in 26% of the observations, our expertise was insufficient to be confident of an identification. We scored the final 10% of the observations as unidentifiable. The location data for most of the observations met our expectations in that marine species were located on the periphery of the island and terrestrial species were found over land, concentrated along island pathways. However, we found about 2.7% of the observations did not make it into the official iNaturalist project because of errors in the GPS coordinates, sometimes placing the observation miles away. All observations were made on Thompson Island but 60 different place names were given for the 2000+ observations. Discussion: A year-long biodiveristy inventory of the Boston Harbor Islands using the iNaturalist approach and completed in 2017 found 475 species. The 202 species identified (by students and identifiers) on Thompson Island are a signficant contribution considering the short, late summer sampling period. The short field experience with naïve observers contributes to the relatively low (19%) proportion of species in common among the three years. The students were predictably attracted to species that were easily photographed e.g., did not move or were of the right size. Examples include herbs and shrubs that were flowering or fruiting, oysters, mussels, snail shells, and insects such as butterflies. The instructors encouraged the students to take photographs of the whole organism and its parts, but some images were out of focus or did not capture details essential for identification. We expected that using GPS technology within miles of downtown Boston would lead to precise and accurate species locations and that was what we found. However, the errors associated with an observation can be large, and 2.7% of observations that should have been included in the project were initially not. Conclusions: This bioblitz exercise was designed with an educational objective: to give college freshman from the city the opportunity to observe nature and partake in a citizen science project. We conclude that a short instruction period provided to naïve users armed with a digital native’s expertise usingsmart phones allowed them to collect observations that the iNaturalist community of species identifiers was able to turn into quality biodiversity observations. The students’ observations are building a record that can be mined by scientists to answer a variety of questions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Poonam Yadav ◽  
John Darlington

In recent years, citizen science has grown in popularity due to a number of reasons, including the emphasis on informal learning and creativity potential associated with these initiatives. Citizen science projects address research questions from various domains, ranging from Ecology to Astronomy.  Due to the advancement of communication technologies, which makes outreach and engagement of wider communities easier, scientists are keen to turn their own research into citizen science projects. However, the development, deployment and management of these projects remains challenging. One of the most important challenges is building the project itself. There is no single tool or framework, which guides the step-by-step development of the project, since every project has specific characteristics, such as geographical constraints or volunteers' mode of participation. Therefore, in this article, we present a series of conceptual frameworks for categorisation, decision and deployment, which guide a citizen science project creator in every step of creating a new project starting from the research question to project deployment.  The frameworks are designed with consideration to the properties of already existing citizen science projects and could be easily extended to include other dimensions, which are not currently perceived.


Author(s):  
Maryam Lotfian ◽  
Jens Ingensand ◽  
Olivier Ertz ◽  
Sarah Composto ◽  
Mathias Oberson ◽  
...  

The public participation in scientific projects (citizen science) is significantly increasing specially with technology developments in recent years. Volunteers play an essential role in citizen science projects, therefore understanding their motivations, and understanding how to sustain them to keep contributing to the project are of utmost importance. This paper presents the analysis of volunteers’ characteristics and their motivations to contribute to a citizen science project, which aims at encouraging citizens to take action for biodiversity. The results from the online survey illustrate that people are more motivated by intrinsic nature-related motives rather than extrinsic motivations.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ginger Tsueng ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Steven M. Nanis ◽  
Andrew I Su

AbstractCitizen science is the participation in scientific research by members of the public, and it is an increasingly valuable tool for both scientists and educators. For researchers, citizen science is a means of more quickly investigating questions which would otherwise be time-consuming and costly to study. For educators, citizen science offers a means to engage students in actual research and improve learning outcomes. Since most citizen science projects are usually designed with research goals in mind, many lack the necessary educator materials for successful integration in a formal science education (FSE) setting. In an ideal world, researchers and educators would build the necessary materials together; however, many researchers lack the time, resources, and networks to create these materials early on in the life of a citizen science project. For resource-poor projects, we propose an intermediate entry point for recruiting from the educational setting: community service or service learning requirements (CSSLRs). Many schools require students to participate in community service or service learning activities in order to graduate. When implemented well, CSSLRs provide students with growth and development opportunities outside the classroom while contributing to the community and other worthwhile causes. However, CSSLRs take time, resources, and effort to implement well. Just as citizen science projects need to establish relationships to transition well into formal science education, schools need to cultivate relationships with community service organizations. Students and educators at schools with CSSLRs where implementation is still a work in progress may be left with a burdensome requirement and inadequate support. With the help of a volunteer fulfilling a CSSLR, we investigated the number of students impacted by CSSLRs set at different levels of government and explored the qualifications needed for citizen science projects to fulfill CSSLRs by examining the explicitly-stated justifications for having CSSLRs, surveying how CSSLRs are verified, and using these qualifications to demonstrate how an online citizen science project, Mark2Cure, could use this information to meet the needs of students fulfilling CSSLRs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-373
Author(s):  
A..J. Barr ◽  
A. Haas ◽  
C.W. Kalderon

The engagement of citizen scientists with the HiggsHunters. org citizen science project is investigated through analysis of behaviour, discussion and survey data. More than 38,000 citizen scientists from 179 countries participated, classifying 1.5 million features of interest on about 39,000 distinct images. While most citizen scientists classified only a handful of images, some classified hundreds or even thousands. Analysis of frequently used terms on the dedicated discussion forum demonstrated that a high level of scientific engagement was not uncommon. Evidence was found for an emergent and distinct technical vocabulary developing within the citizen science community. A survey indicates a high level of engagement and an appetite for further citizen science projects related to the Large Hadron Collider.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Maryam Lotfian ◽  
Jens Ingensand ◽  
Olivier Ertz ◽  
Simon Oulevay ◽  
Thibaud Chassin

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Data quality is the primary concern for researchers working on citizen science projects. The collected data by citizen science participants are heterogeneous and therefore must be validated. There are several validation approaches depending on the theme and objective of the citizen science project, but the most common approach is the expert review. While expert validation is essential in citizen science projects, considering it as the only validation approach can be very difficult and complicated for the experts. In addition, volunteers can get demotivated to contribute if they do not receive any feedback regarding their submissions. This project aims at introducing an automatic filtering mechanism for a biodiversity citizen science project. The goals of this project are to first use an available historical database of the local species to filter out the unusual ones, and second to use machine learning and image recognition techniques to verify if the observation image corresponds with the right species type. The submissions that does not successfully pass the automatic filtering will be flagged as unusual and goes through expert review. The objective is on the one hand to simplify validation task by the experts, and on the other hand to increase participants’ motivation by giving them real-time feedback on their submissions. Finally, the flagged observations will be classified as valid, valid but uncommon, and invalid, and the observation outliers (rare species) can be identified for each specific region.</p>


Author(s):  
Andrea Wiggins ◽  
Kevin Crowston

Citizen science has seen enormous growth in recent years, in part due to the influence of the Internet, and a corresponding growth in interest. However, the few stand-out examples that have received attention from media and researchers are not representative of the diversity of the field as a whole, and therefore may not be the best models for those seeking to study or start a citizen science project. In this work, we present the results of a survey of citizen science project leaders, identifying sub-groups of project types according to a variety of features related to project design and management, including funding sources, goals, participant activities, data quality processes, and social interaction. These combined features highlight the diversity of citizen science, providing an overview of the breadth of the phenomenon and laying a foundation for comparison between citizen science projects and to other online communities.


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