Abstract: Many citizen science projects ask people to create an account before they participate – some require it. What effect does the registration process have on the number and quality of contributions? We present a controlled study comparing the effects of mandatory registration with an interface that enables people to participate without registering, but allows…
Abstract: The rise of citizen science as a form of public participation in research has engaged many disciplines and communities. This paper uses the lens of Participatory Design to contrast two different approaches to citizen science: one that puts citizens in the service of science and another that involves them in the production of knowledge….
This review grew out of a workshop held in 2014, but it directly addresses issues of validation which are alive in the community today, and which are of interest not only to geographic information projects but to many data analysis tasks. — CJL — Abstract: With the ubiquity of advanced web technologies and location-sensing hand…
We are pleased to welcome into the world the new journal “Citizen Science: Theory and Practice” – one hope for this Citizen Science Today aggregator site is to bring forward grey literature from e.g. blog posts and promote it as an important part of the emerging conversation on citizen science that CSTP will only enhance. — LFF — The…
Abstract: Online Citizen Science platforms are good examples of socio-technical systems where technology-enabled interactions occur between scientists and the general public (volunteers). Citizen Science platforms usually host multiple Citizen Science projects, and allow volunteers to choose the ones to participate in. Recent work in the area has demonstrated a positive feedback loop between participation and…
We could have filled this month’s edition of Citizen Science Today with articles from this special edition of JCOM. Instead, follow the link below to read widely and deeply about the field. – CJL – JCOM is an open access journal on science communication. Since the world of communication and the scientific community are now…
Abstract: We investigate the development of scientific content knowledge of volunteers participating in online citizen science projects in the Zooniverse (http://www.zooniverse.org). We use econometric methods to test how measures of project participation relate to success in a science quiz, controlling for factors known to correlate with scientific knowledge. Citizen scientists believe they are learning about…
Abstract: The human auditory system is adept at detecting sound sources of interest from a complex mixture of several other simultaneous sounds. The ability to selectively attend to the speech of one speaker whilst ignoring other speakers and background noise is of vital biological significance—the capacity to make sense of complex ‘auditory scenes’ is significantly…
This isn’t a new book, but it’s an interesting take on an old story not much discussed in the citizen science community. Perhaps historians of twentieth century citizen science are needed alongside their more common nineteenth century colleagues. – CJL – Technological advances come in such small increments that we rarely think about their accumulated…
Abstract: The participation of non-professionally trained people in so-called citizen science (CS) projects is a much discussed topic at the moment. Frequently, however, the contribution of citizens is limited to only a few narrow tasks. Focusing on an initiative dedicated to the study of the human microbiome, this paper describes such a case where citizen…