Challenges for advanced work in citizen science

What is it about?

Citizen science is a broad term describing scientific projects that rely on contributions to scientific research from members of the public (i.e., citizens in the broadest sense of the word). This paper presents a case study of the Galaxy Zoo Quench project, a project sponsored by the Zooniverse in which volunteers were invited to write an academic paper in collaboration with the project scientists. In the reported case, a key problem throughout is the apparent difficulty for volunteers to assess the usability of their work as a scientific product, a task that requires scientific domain knowledge to be able to perform. In Zooniverse, volunteers thrived when given clear tasks. A few could take on more advanced tasks. However, they were ultimately not able to make decisions about what constituted an interesting data set or result, which resulted in the project not reaching a successful conclusion.

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Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Studies of citizen science volunteers suggest that many are motivated by the opportunity to contribute to real science, so a number of projects have sought to involve volunteers in more advanced tasks, beyond simply classifying data into pre-existing categories. However, to successfully include volunteers more deeply in scientific research requires careful consideration of the kind of project management needed, i.e., how to coordinate these contributions. Our analysis leads to several recommendations for how to support advanced work with citizen scientists.

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