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Involving the public in scientific discovery offers opportunities for engagement, learning, participation, and action. Since its launch in 2007, the CitSci.org platform has supported hundreds of community-driven citizen science projects involving thousands of participants who have generated close to a million scientific measurements around the world. Members using CitSci.org follow their curiosities and concerns to develop, lead, or simply participate in research projects. While professional scientists are trained to make ethical determinations related to the collection of, access to, and use of information, citizen scientists and practitioners may be less aware of such issues and more likely to become involved in ethical dilemmas. In this era of big and open data, where data sharing is encouraged and open science is promoted, privacy and openness considerations can often be overlooked. Platforms that support the collection, use, and sharing of data and personal information need to consider their responsibility to protect the rights to and ownership of data, the provision of protection options for data and members, and at the same time provide options for openness. This requires critically considering both intended and unintended consequences of the use of platforms, data, and volunteer information. Here, we use our journey developing CitSci.org to argue that incorporating customization into platforms through flexible design options for project managers shifts the decision-making from top-down to bottom-up and allows project design to be more responsive to goals. To protect both people and data, we developed—and continue to improve—options that support various levels of “open” and “closed” access permissions for data and membership participation. These options support diverse governance styles that are responsive to data uses, traditional and indigenous knowledge sensitivities, intellectual property rights, personally identifiable information concerns, volunteer preferences, and sensitive data protections. We present a typology for citizen science openness choices, their ethical considerations, and strategies that we are actively putting into practice to expand privacy options and governance models based on the unique needs of individual projects using our platform.
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How to close the loop with citizen scientists to advance meaningful science
Abstract Citizen science yields increased scientific capacity in exchange for science literacy and promises of a more responsive science to society’s needs. Yet, citizen science projects are criticized for producing few scientific outputs and having exploitative relationships with the citizens who participate. In the eagerness to capture new data, scientists can fail to see the value of citizen scientists’ expertise beyond data generation and can forget to close the loop with outputs that benefit the public interest. Citizen scientists are experts in their local environments who, when asked, can improve scientific processes and products. To the degree that citizen scientists are relegated to data collection, we shortchange opportunities to advance science. Rather than merely critique, we present an evidence-based engagement approach for listening to citizen scientist participants and incorporating their input into science processes and products that can be retrofitted onto existing citizen science projects or integrated from a project’s inception. We offer this adaptable blueprint in four steps and illustrate this approach via a crowdsourced hydrology project on the Boyne River, USA. We show how engaging voices of citizen scientists at key points in the project improves both the products of science (a real-time ecohydrological model) and the process of conducting the science (adaptations to help improve data collection). Distinct from outreach or education, considering citizen scientists as an equally interesting site of inquiry can improve the practice and outputs of science.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1661156
- PAR ID:
- 10531153
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sustainability Science
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1862-4065
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1527-1542
- Size(s):
- p. 1527-1542
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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