ECSA Working Group:
Citizen science networks
However, many of these initiatives face a number of challenges. These include, but are not limited to: funding; organization of workloads (e.g. organizational structure, IPR); and framing of citizen science (e.g. transparent criteria on which projects are listed on online platforms, and which are not).
In the Citizen Science Networks working group, representatives from established and emerging citizen science networks are collaborating to tackle some of these challenges. The group’s first goal is to frame transparent criteria that help networks to decide, in a transparent and impartial way, if a project should be listed as citizen science on online platforms or not. This will facilitate the exchange of projects between networks and make projects more comparable.
Chairs
Working group
members
- Anders Tøttrup
- Annelies Duerincky
- Cristina Luís
- Darlene Cavalier
- Gaia Agnello
- Gitte Kragh
- Grant Miller
- Jakub Trojan
- Liesbeth Gijsel
- Lotta Tomasson
- Marika Cieslinski
- Patricia Tiago
- Susanne Hecker
- Susanne Tönsmann
Activity plan
Current stage of the process
At the beginning, the process – of how to find such criteria and to be as open as possible – was discussed in several online meetings. The common goal of the working group is to have measurable, easy to understand criteria. Project leaders from citizen science projects, as well as the general public of the countries represented in the working group, will be consulted in several steps of the process, if they are not part of the working group already. To facilitate this involvement, the necessary documents will be translated into the respective languages to avoid exclusion due to language barriers.
In the first step, members of the working group decided to start literature research on characteristics and criteria for citizen science, and to extract criteria, characteristics, definitions and/or typologies from these documents. This resulted in a wide range of concepts and ideas of citizen science.
In 2020, the collected characteristics / criteria / definitions / typologies from the literature were grouped and refined in a transparent process. An important part of the work was to assure a process documentation that allowed people to see which of the collected characteristics / criteria / definitions / typologies form the basis of each single criterion in the final criteria catalogue. The working group formulated a first draft of the criteria, which can be found on a padlet where everyone can add comments. This first draft was presented at the ECSA 2020 conference to collect further feedback.
In 2021 the working group will revise the criteria according to the feedback from national and international citizen science communities, and develop FAQs and guiding texts for the criteria. Furthermore, as a very important part of the process, there will be a public consultation to collect feedback and comments from citizen scientists, after which the criteria will be finalised.
Past achievements
- The working group held several online meetings to discuss possible criteria and how to be as open as possible in this process.
- Group members conducted a literature review on characteristics and criteria for citizen science, and extracted criteria, characteristics, definitions and/or typologies from these document.
How to get involved
Interested in joining this working group? Please write to the chairs at: office [AT] citizen-science.at