Citizen Science
This guide introduces citizen science, public participation and collaboration in scientific research.
Click on the book cover to access the ebook through the catalog
Open Access Scholarly Articles
In the true spirit of citizen science, the following articles are all open access, not requiring a Rutgers NetID.
- Garbarino, J., & Mason, C. E. (2016). The Power of Engaging Citizen Scientists for Scientific Progress. Journal of microbiology & biology education, 17(1), 7–12."citizen-researcher relationship creates an incredible synergy, allowing for the creation, execution, and analysis of research projects that would otherwise prove impossible in traditional research settings"
- Pocock, M. J., Tweddle, J. C., Savage, J., Robinson, L. D., & Roy, H. E. (2017). The diversity and evolution of ecological and environmental citizen science. PloS one, 12(4), e0172579.Explores the diversity of approaches via a systematic search an analysis of 509 environmental and ecological citizen science projects.
- Cohn, J. P. (2008). Citizen science: Can volunteers do real research?. BioScience, 58(3), 192-197.Cited over 1,000 times, the article addressed seminal questions, such as reliability of data. Includes some early history of citizen science and slides of a project.
- Silvertown, J. (2009). A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in ecology & evolution, 24(9), 467-471.One of the top cited articles on the topic providing an overview on the origins of citizen science, three case studies, and early examples.
- Bonney, R., Cooper, C. B., Dickinson, J., Kelling, S., Phillips, T., Rosenberg, K. V., & Shirk, J. (2009). Citizen science: a developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy. BioScience, 59(11), 977-984.This top cited article considers citizen science key in advancing scientific knowledge via helping participants to learn about their subjects and the research process. Presents a model for developing a citizen science project based on projects at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
- Stilgoe, J., Lock, S. J., & Wilsdon, J. (2014). Why should we promote public engagement with science?. Public understanding of science, 23(1), 4-15.Looking back to the history of engaging the public with science via a journal, this essay advocates for a more ambitious interests in the idea of publicly engaged science.
- Kullenberg, C., & Kasperowski, D. (2016). What Is Citizen Science? – A Scientometric Meta-Analysis. PloS One, 11(1), e0147152–.This study analyses "two datasets (N = 1935, N = 633) retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) with the aim of giving a scientometric description of what the concept of CS entails."
- Tauginienė L, Butkevičienė E, Vohland K, et al. Citizen science in the social sciences and humanities: the power of interdisciplinarity. Palgrave communications. 2020;6(1):1-11A study exploring how citizen science is practiced in the so far less addressed social sciences and humanities.
- Heigl F, Kieslinger B, Paul KT, Uhlik J, Dörler D. Opinion: Toward an international definition of citizen science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS. 2019;116(17):8089-8092.An op-ed on what CS is, what it is not, and what criteria CS projects must fulfill to ensure high-quality participatory research.
- Woolley JP, McGowan ML, Teare HJA, et al. Citizen science or scientific citizenship? Disentangling the uses of public engagement rhetoric in national research initiatives. BMC medical ethics. 2016;17(1):33-33.The authors take a look at the ethical and social implications of the recruitment strategy of encouraging the public to become involved in various research initiatives.
Citizen Science and Covid-19
The global pandemic seems to be advancing citizen science. Here is a sample of early Covid-related resources and publications.
- Lai, D., Wang, D., Calvano, J., Raja, A. S., & He, S. (2020). Addressing immediate public coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns through social media: Utilizing Reddit’s AMA as a framework for Public Engagement with Science. PloS one, 15(10), e0240326.An article from the area of health sciences approaching research with a "Public Engagement with Science (PES)" mentality.
- Firth, J. A., Hellewell, J., Klepac, P., Kissler, S., Kucharski, A. J., & Spurgin, L. G. (2020). Using a real-world network to model localized COVID-19 control strategies. Nature medicine, 1-7.This research "simulated control strategies for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a real-world social network generated from high-resolution GPS data that were gathered in the course of a citizen-science experiment."
- Balakrishnan, V. (2020). COVID-19: Playing away the pandemic. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 20(7), 792–792.The article presents how games aiming at engaging people to creatively combat the lockdown can also engage the public on a citizen science path to create awareness about Covid-19.
- Provenzi, L., & Barello, S. (2020). The Science of the Future: Establishing a Citizen-Scientist Collaborative Agenda After Covid-19. Frontiers in Public Health, 8.With Citizen Scientists and the COVID-19 emergency in its focus, the article looks at roles of citizen science as it "informs research questions, data collection and analysis, and conclusions that can impact the quality of life in local environments."