WHAT’S IN A NAME?
SECTION 1:
CITIZEN SCIENCE OVERVIEW
Citizen science is the most widely used term to describe this process of public involvement with scientific research. Here’s how the National Academies explains the global use of the term: “The committee uses the term citizen science because that is the term most commonly used within the scientific and science education communities to describe these activities. We recognize that the term ‘citizen,’ particularly in the United States, connects to a contentious immigration debate about who is eligible to participate in civic life, including science and education. While other terms can be used to describe citizen science, such as community science, public participation in scientific research, participatory action research and community-based participatory research, none of them is as complete or widely used as citizen science. The committee uses citizen science despite its associated tensions.”
Learn about citizen science and how it can help your community
Science is our most reliable system of gaining new knowledge and citizen science is the public involvement in the inquiry and discovery of new scientific knowledge. A citizen science project can involve between one person and millions of people collaborating toward a common goal. Typically, public involvement centers around data collection, analysis or reporting. Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University’s Communication and S&TS departments describes three possible definitions: • The participation of nonscientists in the process of gathering data according to specific scientific protocols and in the process of using and interpreting that data.
bit.ly/NationalAcademiesCitizenScience
• The engagement of nonscientists in true decision-making about policy issues that have technical or scientific components.
Bottom line: We are citizens of the world and citizen science is serious science. If it were up to us, we’d just call this “science”!
• The engagement of research scientists in the democratic and policy process.
WHO CAN BE A CITIZEN SCIENTIST? A citizen scientist can be anyone who voluntarily and actively engages in scientific research, typically in formal or informal collaboration with professional scientists. Citizen scientists can be online gamers, retirees, environmental justice advocates, naturalists, technologists, fishermen, farmers, ham radio operators, stargazers, birders, weather watchers, students and teachers, scouts, doctors, parents, children, corporate volunteers, undergraduate students and even current and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders in science professions (ScienceCheerleaders.org) who train and engage thousands of nontraditional audiences in citizen
Crowdsourced SCIENCE SOCIAL SCIENCE
COMPUTER SCIENCE
TECHNOLOGY
ENGINEERING
NATURE
volunteer monitoring
ENVIRONMENT ASTRONOMY GENETICS PSYCHOLOGY
ECOLOGY community science public participation
scientific research STATISTICS
The Library & Community Guide to Citizen Science
science. Citizen scientists share and follow protocols to advance scientific knowledge.
MEDICINE
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SECTION 1: Citizen Science Overview
