This thorough study of the effects of participation in citizen science on a group of high school students is amongst the first to look at the changes in attitude. It’s worth a read in its own right, but is sure to be cited in proposals for the foreseeable future. – CJL – Abstract: Citizen science…
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…
One test of a citizen science project’s success is the ability to produce scientific results – and sometimes that’s a case of connecting the right people. This excellent story involves exactly that – and a gecko. On August 14, 2013, Glen Yoshida snapped a photo of a lizard clinging to a wall on his front…
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…
One of the reasons we were excited to start Citizen Science Today was the chance to highlight commentary and results from a wide range of sources, but I didn’t expect us to be featuring a post from a mailing list. Nonetheless, Ben Brumfield’s careful response to the question ‘where are the failures?’ on a transcription…
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…
This paper is just one example showcasing the great strides that have been taken in the arena of “Citizen Historians” as more and more archives are opened up for transcription and metadata tagging by volunteers. –LFF Abstract: Operation War Diary, launched in 2014, is a crowdsourcing project in which ‘Citizen Historians’ tag First World War British Army…
The Flint water crisis has caused all sorts of reflections on citizen science practice; this blog, from Scientific American, examines the broad range of science communication that attempts to make dialogue between public and (professional) scientists a two-way street. –Chris Comedian Lily Tomlin once asked, “Why is it when we talk to God we’re said…
This article pushes forward a technology that would enable smart phones to be used as “relay” stations for sparse data collection networks. This is a great step for increasing citizen science opportunities centered on data collection. There is also a good general discussion of the use of embedded sensing technologies. — LFF Abstract: Interest in…
You hear variations of the same concern over and over: “can you please add a way to skip images?” “I wish I had a way to tell you that I’m really unsure on some pictures.” “Some of these are so hard. I’m worried that I’m going to mess up your data!” If you run an…