Abstract: Citizen science is a rapidly developing research approach, increasing in popularity within the science community and civil society, as well as in the media and among policy-makers (Pettibone et al., 2017). Various attempts to define citizen science have been made (e.g. Irwin, 1995; Bonney et al., 2009; Wiggins & Crowston, 2011; Shirk et al., 2012; Haklay, 2015), most of which encompass a kind of active participation of volunteers in the scientific process. In recent years, networks have played an important role in the development and professionalization of citizen science (Göbel et al., 2017; Storksdieck et al., 2016). In this article, we present an overview of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and Bürger schaffen Wissen (roughly translated to “citizens create knowledge”), an online platform for presenting and networking citizen science projects in Germany.

Source: David Ziegler, D., Mascarenhas, A., 2017. Networks for Citizen Science in Europe and Germany. Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society 5(3): 68-71. [http://fofj.org/index.php/journal/article/view/339]