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Citizen Science/Participatory Science

Citizen science allows volunteer non-scientists to participate in data collection and analysis for scientific projects. This guide includes links to existing projects, both nationally and in Illinois.

Locating research based on citizen science

To locate research papers that use citizen science data, search for any or all of the following concepts, modified by the scientific discipline for which you're seeking information:

  • "citizen science"
  • "participatory science"
  • crowdsourcing

Below are a few open source search engines to get you started. Don't forget the commercial databases (Scopus, Web of Science, etc) that may also be available through your local library. Also check out Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, an open access journal published by the Citizen Science Association.

Associations

Collecting and using citizen science data in your research

For data generated by the public to have a meaningful impact, quality assurance during data gathering is critical. U.S. EPA has created the Handbook for Citizen Science Quality Assurance and Documentation to help organizations starting or growing a participatory/citizen science project. The handbook is designed for organizations that are starting or growing a participatory/citizen science project and where transparency in the scientific methods for collecting the data are central to the outcome of the project. The handbook also includes templates and examples.

The Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences has developed a data ethics toolkit and a data standard for public participation in scientific research.

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences and the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science have developed an app that enables users to conduct real data science analysis using only natural language. The tool uses a multi-agent AI system to perform data cleaning, modeling, and visualization based on user-provided datasets and questions.

Research papers that use participatory science data

This is a small sample of research papers that use citizen science data.