Citizen scientists face problems doing their own analyses and writing a paper

What is it about?

The GalaxyZoo Quench project sought to include volunteers in writing a scientific paper including doing their own analyses. A coordination theory analysis of the project suggested that writing a paper would have a very different set in dependencies than typical citizen science projects and so be difficult for the volunteers to manage. Unexpectedly though, the project actually ran into problems earlier, which we interpret as being due to difficulties for the volunteers to know what kinds of work products would be useful for later stages (e.g., what data are needed for analysis and what kinds of analyses are scientifically interesting).

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Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Many citizen science projects seek to increase the scope of volunteer work. This paper provides a framework for analyzing the coordination problems that might be experienced and so provides a guide for project managers.