What is Citizen Science?
Citizen Science is the use of volunteers from the general public to collect and analyze scientific data.
The scientific field has become so vast that many of the world’s most important questions risk being unanswered, or worse, unasked. The amount of research required to solve scientific issues far extends what any individual can do on their own. Citizen science aims to solve this problem by “[harnessing] the power of people by crowd sourcing data collection and analysis.” (Metz, 2015)
Anyone can become a citizen scientist. Citizen scientists are volunteers who "collect and/or process data as part of a scientific enquiry." (Silverton, 2009) The number of projects that utilize citizen scientists is growing, especially in ecology and environmental science (Silverton, 2009). Citizen science is great opportunity to gain a variety of perspectives on scientific issues as well as for students to engage in and contribute to meaningful research.
Metz, S. 2015. Citizen science. The Science Teacher (National Science Teachers Association), 82(8), 6.
Silvertown, Jonathan. 2009. A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24 (9): 467-71.
Notable Citizen Science Projects
- WikipediaThe Citizen Science Wikipedia page offers a detailed list of the various projects to get involved in.
- SciStarterSciStarter connects people to citizen science projects, citizen scientists and resources.
- ZooniverseThe Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. Their goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, without the help of thousands of citizen scientist volunteers. Projects cover a variety of disciplines ranging from sciences to humanities.
- Citizenscience.govLinks to a catalogue of Citizen Science projects sponsored by U.S. federal agencies. Limit by project topic (e.g. ocean/water and marine), agency, and participant age.
- iNaturalistiNaturalist covers the terrestrial and aquatic world. Participants record an observation by taking a photograph, share it with other naturalists, and discuss the findings in order to crowdsource a correct identification. iNaturalist data is shared with data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility described above.
