Abstract: Citizen science has the potential to expand the scope and scale of research in ecology and conservation, but many professional researchers remain skeptical of data produced by nonexperts. We devised an approach for producing accurate, reliable data from untrained, nonexpert volunteers. On the citizen science website www.snapshotserengeti.org, more than 28,000 volunteers classified 1.51 million images…
Abstract: The first Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) took place on June 21, 2014. In a coordinated effort, an internationally distributed group of scientists collected samples from marine surface waters in order to study microbial diversity on a single day with global granularity. Concurrently, citizen scientists enriched the OSD initiative through the MyOSD project, providing additional…
Abstract: Crowdsourcing can efficiently complete tasks that are difficult to automate, but the quality of crowdsourced data is tricky to evaluate. Algorithms to grade volunteer work often assume that all tasks are similarly difficult, an assumption that is frequently false. We use a cropland identification game with over 2,600 participants and 165,000 unique tasks to…
This article – in the Royal Astronomical Society’s Astronomy and Geophysics journal – is a wonderful crossover between two different Zooniverse projects. Ships logs included in the Old Weather project fed the curiosity of Solar Storm Watch volunteer Jules Wilkinson, who wrote up the aurora logs of the USS Jeannette Abstract: Julia Wilkinson and a…
Abstract: Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to the widespread creation and sharing of geographic information by private citizens, often through platforms such as online mapping tools, social media, and smartphone applications. VGI has shifted the ways information is created, shared, used and experienced, with important implications for applications of geospatial data, including emergency management. Detailed…
Who doesn’t like a discussion of what exactly citizen science is? This paper is a timely reminder of the wide diversity of ways in which people participate in science, and the need to support all sorts of projects instead of merely repeating ourselves again and again. Abstract: In recent years, citizen science has gained popularity…
Abstract: The scientific value of citizen-science programs is limited when the data gathered are inconsistent, erroneous, or otherwise unusable. Long-term monitoring studies, such as Our Project In Hawai’i’s Intertidal (OPIHI), have clear and consistent procedures and are thus a good model for evaluating the quality of participant data. The purpose of this study was to…
Abstract: Kinsey Reporter is a global mobile app to share, explore, and visualize anonymous data about sex. Reports are submitted via smartphone, then visualized on a website or downloaded for offline analysis. In this paper we present the major features of the Kinsey Reporter citizen science platform designed to preserve the anonymity of its contributors,…
Abstract: Our natural environment is complex and sensitive, and is home to a number of species on the verge of extinction. Surveying is one approach to their preservation, and can be supported by technology. This paper presents the deployment of a smartphone-based citizen science biodiversity application. Our findings from interviews with members of the biodiversity…
This is an excellent example of the in-depth studies needed to move the field of citizen science forward. In this paper, it is made clear that the type of device used to record data inputs from citizen science projects has a large impact on whether the data collected by the citizen scientists are of research-grade…