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Abstract When participants share data to a central entity, those who have taken on the responsibility of accepting the data and handling its management may also have control of decisions about the data, including its use, re‐use, accessibility, and more. Such concentrated control of data is often a default practice across many forms of participatory sciences, which can be extractive in some contexts and a way to protect participants in other contexts. To avoid extractive practices and related harms, projects can adopt structures so that those who make decisions about the data set and/or each datum are different from those responsible forexecutingthe subsequent decisions about data management. We propose two alternative models for improving equity in data governance, each model representing a spectrum of options. With an individualized control model, each participant can place their data in a central repository while still retaining control of it, such as through simple opt‐in or opt‐out features or through blockchain technology. With a shared control model, representatives of salient participant groups, such as through participant advisory boards, collectively make decisions on behalf of their constituents. These equitable models are relevant to all participatory science systems, and particularly necessary in contexts where dominant‐culture institutions engage marginalized peoples. 

As the scientific community, like society more broadly, reckons with long-standing challenges around accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, we would be wise to pay attention to issues and lessons emerging in debates around citizen science. When practitioners first placed the modifier “citizen” on science, they intended to signify an inclusive variant within the scientific enterprise that enables those without formal scientific credentials to engage in authoritative knowledge production (1). Given that participants are overwhelmingly white adults, above median income, with a college degree (2, 3), it is clear that citizen science is typically not truly an egalitarian variant of science, open and available to all members of society, particularly those underrepresented in the scientific enterprise. Some question whether the term “citizen” itself is a barrier to inclusion, with many organizations rebranding their programs as “community science.” But this co-opts a term that has long referred to distinct, grassroots practices of those underserved by science and is thus not synonymous with citizen science. Swapping the terms is not a benign action. Our goal is not to defend the term citizen science, nor provide a singular name for the field. Rather, we aim to explore what the field, and the multiple publics it serves, might gain or lose by replacing the term citizen science and the potential repercussions of adopting alternative terminology (including whether a simple name change alone would do much to improve inclusion).