This paper from the ever-prolific Cornell Lab of Ornithology team describes the creation of a new dataset of annotated images. Those interested in volunteer citizen science might be interested in another conclusion: We find that citizen scientists are significantly more accurate than Mechanical Turkers at zero cost. –CJL Abstract: We introduce tools and methodologies to…

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Abstract: Citizen science has a long history in the ecological sciences and has made substantial contributions to science, education, and society. Developments in information technology during the last few decades have created new opportunities for citizen science to engage ever larger audiences of volunteers to help address some of ecology’s most pressing issues, such as…

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In 2011, the New York Public Library (NYPL) released 9,000 digitized restaurant menus with “delicious data” that had been “frozen as pixels,” making the menus difficult to search, index, and discover online. Along with the menus, the NYPL launched an interface that asked the public to help transcribe the thousands of menus and the hundreds…

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Besides describing some pretty cool science, this article touches on distributed computing as a mode of citizen science but also points to the difficulties of keeping a good citizen science project funded. –LFF     Milkyway@Home is in trouble. The citizen science-powered search for our galaxy’s dark matter lost all of its federal funding last…

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This interview is with Shah Selbe. Shah is a National Geographic Explorer and, with colleagues at Nat Geo and elsewhere, is helping to shape the fields of open ecology and open conservation. As he says, he’s an engineer developing technologies to help with our greatest conservation challenges. In this interview, Adam Terlson and I interview Shah…

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Dr Geoffrey Belknap explores ways in which members of the public can produce knowledge and participate in research The questions of how, by whom and where science was done in the Victorian period – the century which brought us ‘modern’ science – is never going to offer straightforward answers. Science, and scientific authority was produced and…

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Republished from the open access peer-reviewed journal PLOS One. Abstract: Volunteers are increasingly being recruited into citizen science projects to collect observations for scientific studies. An additional goal of these projects is to engage and educate these volunteers. Thus, there are few barriers to participation resulting in volunteer observers with varying ability to complete the…

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Abstract: Citizen science provides researchers means to gather or analyse large datasets. At the same time, citizen science projects offer an opportunity for non-scientists to be part of and learn from the scientific process. In the Dutch iSPEX project, a large number of citizens turned their smartphones into actual measurement devices to measure aerosols. This study examined participants’…

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Abstract: Citizen science and participatory sensing are two models of human computation in which participant privacy is a key concern. Technological safeguards are important but partial solutions; a full and accurate description of policies explaining privacy practices must also be present so volunteers can make informed decisions regarding participation. Our study surveyed the policies of…

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The journal Nature published today an editorial on citizen science, titled ‘Rise of the citizen scientist’. It is very good editorial that addresses, head-on, some of the concerns that are raised about citizen science, but it is also have a problematic ending. On the positive side, the editorial recognises that citizen scientists can do more than just data…

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