Tina Phillips

Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy

Citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time. Citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data about species occurrence and distribution around the world. Most citizen science projects also strive to help participants learn about the organisms they are observing and to experience the process by which scientific investigations are conducted. Developing and implementing public data-collection projects that yield both scientific and educational outcomes requires significant effort. This article describes the model for building and operating citizen science projects that has evolved at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology over the past two decades. We hope that our model will inform the fields of biodiversity monitoring, biological research, and science education while providing a window into the culture of citizen science.

The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement

Approaches to citizen science – an indispensable means of combining ecological research with environmental education and natural history observation – range from community-based monitoring to the use of the internet to “crowd-source” various scientific tasks, from data collection to discovery. With new tools and mechanisms for engaging learners, citizen science pushes the envelope of what ecologists can achieve, both in expanding the potential for spatial ecology research and in supplementing existing, but localized, research programs. The primary impacts of citizen science are seen in biological studies of global climate change, including analyses of phenology, landscape ecology, and macro-ecology, as well as in sub-disciplines focused on species (rare and invasive), disease, populations, communities, and ecosystems. Citizen science and the resulting ecological data can be viewed as a public good that is generated through increasingly collaborative tools and resources, while supporting public participation in science and Earth stewardship.

Public Participation in Scientific Research: a Framework for Deliberate Design

Members of the public participate in scientific research in many different contexts, stemming from traditions as varied as participatory action research and citizen science. Particularly in conservation and natural resource management contexts, where research often addresses complex social-ecological questions, the emphasis on and nature of this participation can significantly affect both the way that projects are designed and the outcomes that projects achieve. We review and integrate recent work in these and other fields, which has converged such that we propose the term public participation in scientific research (PPSR) to discuss initiatives from diverse fields and traditions. We describe three predominant models of PPSR and call upon case studies suggesting that—regardless of the research context—project outcomes are influenced by (1) the degree of public participation in the research process and (2) the quality of public participation as negotiated during project design. To illustrate relationships between the quality of participation and outcomes, we offer a framework that considers how scientific and public interests are negotiated for project design toward multiple, integrated goals. We suggest that this framework and models, used in tandem, can support deliberate design of PPSR efforts that will enhance their outcomes for scientific research, individual participants, and social-ecological systems.

Next Steps for Citizen Science

Strategic investments and coordination are needed for citizen science to reach its full potential. Around the globe, thousands of research projects are engaging millions of individuals—many of whom are not trained as scientists—in collecting, categorizing, transcribing, or analyzing scientific data. These projects, known as citizen science, cover a breadth of topics from microbiomes to native bees to water quality to galaxies. Most projects obtain or manage scientific information at scales or resolutions unattainable by individual researchers or research teams, whether enrolling thousands of individuals collecting data across several continents, enlisting small armies of participants in categorizing vast quantities of online data, or organizing small groups of volunteers to tackle local problems.

Key issues and new approaches for evaluating citizen-science learning outcomes

Ecologically oriented citizen-science experiences engage the public in learning while facilitating the achievement of robust scientific program goals. Evaluation of learning outcomes has become increasingly prioritized, requiring citizen-science program managers to understand key issues in evaluation. We argue that citizen science can have other, more far-reaching community-level outcomes, which have received less attention but warrant consideration for continued programmatic improvement.

Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science

Over the past 20 years, thousands of citizen science projects engaging millions of participants in collecting and/or processing data have sprung up around the world. Here we review documented outcomes from four categories of citizen science projects which are defined by the nature of the activities in which their participants engage – Data Collection, Data Processing, Curriculum-based, and Community Science. We find strong evidence that scientific outcomes of citizen science are well documented, particularly for Data Collection and Data Processing projects. We find limited but growing evidence that citizen science projects achieve participant gains in knowledge about science knowledge and process, increase public awareness of the diversity of scientific research, and provide deeper meaning to participants’ hobbies. We also find some evidence that citizen science can contribute positively to social well-being by influencing the questions that are being addressed and by giving people a voice in local environmental decision making. While not all citizen science projects are intended to achieve a greater degree of public understanding of science, social change, or improved science -society relationships, those projects that do require effort and resources in four main categories: (1) project design, (2) outcomes measurement, (3) engagement of new audiences, and (4) new directions for research.