What is citizen science?

Citizen science is scientific research that is entirely or partially conducted by non-scientists (citizens), often in collaboration with or supervised by professional scientists. The participating citizens in citizen science are called 'citizen scientists'.

Citizen science is a broad term. Citizen scientists can, depending on the project they are participating in, perform a broad spectrum of tasks; they can perform counts and observations, build and install sensors, annotate or transcribe text and images, analyze data, design research questions and research methods and report or disseminate research results.

For a broad definition we refer to the 10 principles of citizen science that the European Citizen Science Association formulated.

Does citizen science suit your research?

Citizen science projects that have a connection to the everyday environment of citizens or a societal concern (e.g. mobility, air quality, health...) are by nature more likely to attract and recruit participants. However, there are also large communities of passionate citizen scientists involved in biomonitoring projects such as Waarnemingen.be (Dutch) or online annotation platforms such as Zooniverse.org. Even projects that are a bit further from the citizens' everyday environment, such as counting seashells, transcribing historical sources or analyzing spectograms, are able to attract and engage large numbers of volunteers.

To conclude if citizen science suits your research, we advice to look at the decision tree in the guide 'Choosing and using Citizen Science' by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

In some citizen science projects, a large number of volunteers performs a relatively simple task. In other projects, there is intense collaboration with a much smaller group of highly motivated citizen scientists. This consideration to collaborate with a small or large group of volunteers is depicted in the citizen science pyramid (OpenScientist.org). The basis is crowdsourcing and contributive projects, that attract a lot of citizen scientists to perform simpler tasks, thus gathering a lot of data.

Higher steps of the pyramid show more intense forms of collaborations; here, citizen scientists are not only involved in data gathering and analyzing, but also in drafting research questions, designing or choosing research methods and/or reporting on results. Because the interaction between the citizen scientist and the project leader is more intense on top of the pyramid and thus, requires more time, these projects generally rely on less citizen scientists than the lower levels of the pyramid.

Citizen science is more than just 'helping hands' for your research project. Compelling citizen scientists to stay involved in your projects takes time and a well-thought-out communication strategy. Read all about an effective strategy in our communication guide.