Citizen science

Citizen science (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or amateur/nonprofessional researchers or participants for science, social science and many other disciplines.[1][2] There are variations in the exact definition of citizen science, with different individuals and organizations having their own specific interpretations of what citizen science encompasses.[1] Citizen science is used in a wide range of areas of study including ecology, biology and conservation, health and medical research, astronomy, media and communications and information science.[1][3]

There are different applications and functions of citizen science in research projects.[1][3] Citizen science can be used as a methodology where public volunteers help in collecting and classifying data, improving the scientific community's capacity.[3][4] Citizen science can also involve more direct involvement from the public, with communities initiating projects researching environment and health hazards in their own communities.[3] Participation in citizen science projects also educates the public about the scientific process and increases awareness about different topics.[3][5][4] Some schools have students participate in citizen science projects for this purpose as a part of the teaching curriculums.[5][4][6]

This is a picture of an open laptop on a desk. The student using the laptop is not pictured but you can see one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse pad as if they are in the middle of using the computer. The website on the laptop says EyeWire in rainbow colors at the upper left of the screen and there is a menu option bar across the top of the webpage. The webpage has a black background with a large picture of what appears to be a neuron structure (which looks like branches of purple squiggly lines coming from a small, spherical component). To the right of the screen is where you enter login information and the top left it says, "What is EyeWire? Play a game to map the brain."
A high school student contributes to the citizen science project EyeWire as part of a neurology course.
  1. ^ a b c d Katrin Vohland, ed. (2021). The Science of Citizen Science. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-58278-4. OCLC 1230459796.
  2. ^ Gura, Trisha (April 2013). "Citizen science: Amateur experts". Nature. 496 (7444): 259–261. doi:10.1038/nj7444-259a. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 23586092. S2CID 20840626.
  3. ^ a b c d e Kullenberg, Christopher; Kasperowski, Dick (14 January 2016). Dorta-González, Pablo (ed.). "What Is Citizen Science? – A Scientometric Meta-Analysis". PLOS ONE. 11 (1): e0147152. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1147152K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147152. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 4713078. PMID 26766577.
  4. ^ a b c Steven, Rochelle; Barnes, Megan; Garnett, Stephen T.; Garrard, Georgia; O'Connor, James; Oliver, Jessica L.; Robinson, Cathy; Tulloch, Ayesha; Fuller, Richard A. (October 2019). "Aligning citizen science with best practice: Threatened species conservation in Australia". Conservation Science and Practice. 1 (10). Bibcode:2019ConSP...1E.100S. doi:10.1111/csp2.100. ISSN 2578-4854. S2CID 202327827.
  5. ^ a b Doyle, Cathal; David, Rodreck; Li, Yevgeniya; Luczak-Roesch, Markus; Anderson, Dayle; Pierson, Cameron M. (26 June 2019). "Using the Web for Science in the Classroom". Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science. WebSci '19. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 71–80. doi:10.1145/3292522.3326022. ISBN 978-1-4503-6202-3. S2CID 195777103.
  6. ^ Soanes, Kylie; Cranney, Kate; Dade, Marie C.; Edwards, Amy M.; Palavalli-Nettimi, Ravindra; Doherty, Tim S. (February 2020). "How to work with children and animals: A guide for school-based citizen science in wildlife research: School-based citizen science for wildlife research". Austral Ecology. 45 (1): 3–14. doi:10.1111/aec.12836. hdl:11343/286605. S2CID 209579318.