Abstract
This paper presents a citation study of 143 publications in refereed journals resulting from 23 citizen science (CS) projects in space science and astronomy. The projects generated a median of two papers during their average of six years of operation. The 143 papers produced 4,515 citations for a median of 10 citations/paper. These papers were compared to a uniform group of papers published in the year 2000 in refereed space science journals. The CS papers have an average annual peak citation rate that is about four times the average of the year-2000 sample. The CS citation history profiles peak within 3 years after paper publication but decline thereafter at a faster pace than the average paper published in 2000. This suggests that CS papers “burn brighter” but remain of interest for only half as long as other papers in space science and astronomy. Nevertheless, CS papers compare well with some of the most highly ranked “Top-1000” research papers of the modern era. The proportion of CS papers surpassing 200 citations is one-in-26, which is 40-fold higher than the proportion for the typical paper published in 2000. The study concludes that CS projects are not only as good as conventional non-CS research projects in generating publishable results, but can actually outperform the citation rates of the typical non-CS papers in space science and astronomy.
Highlights
The idea of citizen science (CS) has been around for a very long time, and arguably goes back to the “gentleman science” time of Galileo and his contemporaries
A total of 143 publications in refereed journals resulting from 23 CS projects in space science or astronomy have been investigated for their citation histories
The citation history profiles show a marked trend to peak within 2–3 years after paper publication but decline thereafter at a faster pace than the average science paper published after 2000
Summary
The idea of citizen science (CS) has been around for a very long time, and arguably goes back to the “gentleman science” time of Galileo and his contemporaries. Among the many concerns that scientists raise to the CS approach for conducting scientific research is whether the results will be meaningful to the scientific community at large. This consideration relates to questions about whether novice, non-professional participants are capable of delivering high-quality data to the Principle. Investigator or project team (Lewandowski 2015; Kosmala et al 2016). Labor and software development costs have to be controlled that are associated with setting up and operating a CS project
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