Good question. Citizen science refers broadly to the active engagement of the public in the tasks of scientific research. It is primarily understood as a method for conducting scientific research and is often a way for scientists to gather otherwise unobtainable data. Citizen science projects can involve one person or millions of people working cooperatively towards a common goal. Typically in such projects, public involvement is in data collection, analysis or reporting. Collecting river water samples and photographing rare birds in the wild are well-honed examples of citizen science work, but there is much more that citizen science can comprise.
Over the past several years, citizen science research initiatives have been growing rapidly around the world and are diversifying into many new disciplines, particularly with recent advances in technology and social media use. For example, tools such as photo, video and audio recording techniques and the use of smartphone apps have led to sea changes in how data collected in situ by citizen scientists can be linked and analysed. This increased connectivity has encouraged a range of new observations that are evermore easily recorded, shared and communicated.
The fields that citizen science currently advances include ecology, genetics, medicine, computer science, archaeology, psychology, geography, astronomy, and engineering, among many others. The novel collaborations that can take place through citizen science enable investigations at continental and global scales and across many years — which can lead to discoveries that one single scientist or research group could never achieve working on their own. While such active collaborations between citizens and researchers are indeed growing in popularity today, in fact, ‘citizen science’ as a practice is older than professional science itself: observing the natural world and using such observations to acquire and compile knowledge and to improve everyday life and wellbeing is something that humans (and for that matter non-humans) have been doing for zillions of years.
Citizen science is about much more than mere science outreach or education; it is not just a way to increase stakeholder engagement or to meet all those ‘societal impact’ criteria in a funding proposal. It is about engaging academic and non-scientific community members – whether local, national or global – in scientific research, and it holds real transformative potential for science, for citizens and for society and the planet as a whole. There are umpteen ways to “do” citizen science but four common traits of good citizen science practice are: (1) anyone can participate; (2) participants operate with the same protocol so that data is high in quality and can be combined; (3) data can help research scientists arrive at real conclusions; and (4) a wide community of scientists and citizens work together and share data to which everyone has access.
Typically, good citizen science projects meaningfully contribute to scientific excellence and lead to innovations in scientific methodologies and toolkits. They encourage collaboration across disciplines and fields. They improve public, institutional and scientific understandings of the world. And they build bridges between university researchers and non-university actors and institutions, such as cities, companies, or civil society actors.
