Analysis of citizen science in Brazil: A study of the projects registered in the Civis platform

Citizen science has extensively been reported as a useful tool for scientists gathering large quantities of information (Silvertown et al. 2011; Dickinson et al. 2010; Bonney et al. 2009). Citizen Science has been broadly defined in previous literature. We employ the following for purposes of this paper: partnerships between scientists and the public where data are collected, shared, and analyzed (Jordan et al. 2012). These partnerships result in projects that range in participation capacity, participation design, and project goals. On one hand, there are participatory action research projects (Cooper et al. 2007), initially defined by Caren Cooper as projects initiated by non-scientist members of the public and developed hand-in-hand with scientists or scientists hired by the project as consultants (see also Shirk et al. 2012). On the other hand there are crowdsourced or contributory citizen science projects (Bonney et al. 2009), which allow researchers to gather large amounts of data without any input or participation of the public on project development. These large contributory projects such as eBird (www.eBird.org) and Evolution MegaLab have had success in collecting large-scale data sets from participants for long-term trend analysis in the U.S. and Europe respectively. Crowdsourcing citizen science projects such as FoldIt (www.fold.it) and Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org), have capitalized on large numbers of participants to do analysis that computers are not adept at. Co-created action type citizen science projects represent the middle ground, where partnerships between local citizens and scientists have been successful in preservation and restoration efforts of local waterways in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (e.g., ReClam the Bay (www.reclamthebay.org) and Shermans Creek Conservation (www.shermanscreek.org)). Regardless of the project type, all citizen science programs have participants engaged in authentic scientific research and resulted in successful data collection for scientists. While there is no official count of all the citizen science projects active at any given time, anecdotally there are a large number citizen science projects in ecology. Recent findings on patterns and use of citizen science in research found that the bulk of published citizen science based research was ecological/biological in nature (Follett and Strezov 2015). What has been little studied is the role and impact of the professional scientist who is engaging the citizen scientists. Two areas are of particular interest in this research: (1) who and what disciplines use citizen science and (2) the perceived trust and reliability of citizen science gathered data in academia. Research about the ecologists, and scientists writ-large, engaging participants in their research is limited. It is important to know more about the role and use of citizen science in academia because of its increased use in certain fields not just as a research tool but a method of engagement, and engendering broader support for science within the public sphere. If there is indeed a skewed representation of particular disciplines or individuals, there may be implications for broader citizen science outcomes. Additionally, variation in trust and use, or willingness to use, citizen science or citizen science collected data because of academic practice or identity frames may hinder further gains made in the field of citizen science as * Amanda E. Sorensen amasoren@rutgers.edu

The science of citizen science: Exploring barriers to use as a primary research tool

What is the countercultural potential of citizen science? As a participant in the wider citizen science movement, I can attest that contemporary citizen science initiatives rarely characterise themselves as countercultural. Rather, the goal of most citizen science projects is to be seen as producing orthodox scientific knowledge: the ethos is respectability rather than rebellion (NERC). I will suggest instead that there are resonances with the counterculture that emerged in the 1960s, most visibly through an emphasis on participatory experimentation and the principles of environmental sustainability and social justice. This will be illustrated by example, through two citizen science projects that have a commitment to combining social values with scientific practice. I will then describe the explicitly countercultural organisation, Science for the People, which arose from within the scientific community itself, out of opposition to the Vietnam War. Methodological and conceptual weaknesses in the authoritative model of science are explored, suggesting that there is an opportunity for citizen science to become anti-hegemonic by challenging the hegemony of science itself. This reformulation will be expressed through Deleuze and Guattari's notion of nomadic science, the means through which citizen science could become countercultural. Counterculture Before examining the countercultural potential of citizen science, I set out some of the grounds for identifying a counterculture drawing on the ideas of Theodore Roszak, who invented the term counterculture to describe the new forms of youth movements that emerged in the 1960s (Roszak). This was a perspective that allowed the carnivalesque procession of beatniks, hippies and the New Left to be seen as a single paradigm shift combining psychic and social revolution. But just as striking and more often forgotten is the way Roszak characterised the role of the counterculture as mobilising a vital critique of the scientific worldview (Roszak 273-274). The concept of counterculture has been taken up in diverse ways since its original formation. We can draw, for example, on Lawrence Grossberg's more contemporary analysis of counterculture (Grossberg) to clarify the main concepts and contrast them with a scientific approach. Firstly, a counterculture works on and through cultural formations. This positions it as something the scientific community would see as the other, as the opposite to the objective, repeatable and quantitative truth-seeking of science. Secondly, a counterculture is a diverse and hybrid space without a unitary identity. Again, scientists would often see science as a singular activity applied in modulated forms depending on the context, although in practice the different sciences can experience each other as different tribes. Thirdly, a counterculture is lived as a transformative experience where the participant is fundamentally changed at a psychic level through participation in unique events. Contrast this with the scientific idea of the separation of observer and observed, and the objective repeatability of the experiment irrespective of the experimenter. Fourthly, a counterculture is associated with a unique moment in time, a point of shift from the old to the new. For the counterculture of the 1960s this was the Age of Aquarius. In general, the aim of science and scientists is to contribute to a form of truth that is essentially timeless, in that a physical law is assumed to hold across all time (and space), although science also has moments of radical change with regard to scientific paradigms. Finally, and significantly for the conclusions of this paper, according to Roszak a counterculture stands against the mainstream. It offers a challenge not at the level of detail but, to the fundamental assumptions of the status quo. This is what “science” cannot do, in as much as science itself has become the mainstream. It was the character of science as the bedrock of all values that Roszak himself opposed and for which he named and welcomed the counterculture. Although critical of some of the more shallow aspects of its psychedelic experimentation or political militancy, he shared its criticism of the technocratic society (the technocracy) and the egocentric mode of consciousness. His hope was that the counterculture could help restore a visionary imagination along with a more human sense of community. What Is Citizen Science? In recent years the concept of citizen science has grown massively in popularity, but is still an open and unstable term with many variants. Current moves towards institutionalisation (Citizen Science Association) are attempting to marry growth and stabilisation, with the first Annual General Meeting of the European Citizen Science Association securing a tentative agreement on the common principles of citizen science (Haklay, "European"). Key papers and presentations in the mainstream of the movement emphasise that citizen science is not a new activity (Bonney et al.) with much being made of the fact that the National Audubon Society started its annual Christmas Bird Count in 1900 (National Audubon Society). However, this elides the key role of the Internet in the current surge, which takes two distinct forms; the organisation of distributed fieldwork, and the online crowdsourcing of data analysis. To scientists, the appeal of citizen science fieldwork follows from its distributed character; they can research patterns over large scales and across latitudes in ways that would be impossible for a researcher at a single study site (Toomey). Gathering together the volunteer, observations are made possible by an infrastructure of web tools. The role of the citizen in this is to be a careful observer; the eyes and ears of the scientist in cyberspace. In online crowdsourcing, the internet is used to present pattern recognition tasks; enrolling users in searching images for signs of new planets or the jets of material from black holes. The growth of science crowdsourcing is exponential; one of the largest sites facilitating this kind of citizen science now has well in excess of a million registered users (Zooniverse). Such is the force of the technological aura around crowdsourced science that mainstream publications often conflate it with the whole of citizen science (Parr). There are projects within citizen science which share core values with the counterculture as originally defined by Roszak, in particular open participation and social justice. These projects also show characteristics from Grossberg's analysis of counterculture; they are diverse and hybrid spaces, carry a sense of moving from an old era to a new one, and have cultural forms of their own. They open up the full range of the scientific method to participation, including problem definition, research design, analysis and action. Citizen science projects that aim for participation in all these areas include the Extreme Citizen Science research group (ExCiteS) at University College London (UCL), the associated social enterprise Mapping for Change (Mapping for Change), and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab). ExCiteS sees its version of citizen science as "a situated, bottom-up practice" that "takes into account local needs, practices and culture". Public Lab, meanwhile, argue that many citizen science projects only offer non-scientists token forms of participation in scientific inquiry that rarely amount to more that data collection and record keeping. They counter this through an open process which tries to involve communities all the way from framing the research questions, to prototyping tools, to collating and interpreting the measurements. ExCiteS and Public Lab also share an implicit commitment to social justice through scientific activity. The Public Lab mission is to "put scientific inquiry at the heart of civic life" and the UCL research group strive for "new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world". All of their work is framed by environmental sustainability and care for the planet, whether it's enabling environmental monitoring by indigenous communities in the Congo (ExCiteS) or developing do-it-yourself spectrometry kits to detect crude oil pollution (Public Lab, "Homebrew"). Having provided a case for elements of countercultural DNA being present in bottom-up and problem-driven citizen science, we can contrast this with Science for the People, a scientific movement that was born out of the counterculture. Countercultural Science from the 1970s: Science for the People Science for the People (SftP) was a scientific movement seeded by a rebellion of young physicists against the role of US science in the Vietnam War. Young members of the American Physical Society (APS) lobbied for it to take a position against the war but were heavily criticised by other members, whose written complaints in the communications of the APS focused on the importance of scientific neutrality and the need to maintain the association's purely scientific nature rather than allowing science to become contaminated by politics (Sarah Bridger, in Plenary 2, 0:46 to 1:04). The counter-narrative from the dissidents argued that science is not neutral, invoking the example of Nazi science as a justification for taking a stand. After losing the internal vote the young radicals left to form Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), which later became Science for the People (SftP). As well as opposition to the Vietnam War, SftP embodied from the start other key themes of the counterculture, such as civil rights and feminism. For example, the first edition of Science for the People magazine (appearing as Vol. 2, No. 2 of the SESPA Newsletter) included an article about leading Black Panther, Bobby Seale, alongside a piece entitled “Women Demand Equality in Science.” The final articles

Citizen science represents an important opportunity for school students to make real-world connections with science through context-based learning with the potential to increase their engagement, enjoyment and understanding of science. However, to date, citizen science has not experienced wide uptake in school settings and there is a paucity of information about its implementation in the classroom. Here we present a mixed-method approach investigating teachers' knowledge and use of citizen science in Australian classrooms. We explored teachers' experience and perceptions of citizen science, and opportunities and barriers to incorporate citizen science as an educational approach through an online questionnaire. Among the teachers surveyed, 45% (n = 295) had personally participated in citizen science outside of school and 41% (n = 283) had incorporated citizen science projects in classroom lessons. Teachers (45%, n = 295) reported participating in citizen science initiatives multiple times. Also, most projects that teachers were involved in (77%, n = 292) were related to ecological studies, such as species monitoring. Citizen science was reported to be a relatively new approach; used by teachers for less than a year on average. The main challenges included a lack of knowledge, time, confidence, and clarity regarding citizen science project alignment with the Australian curriculum. Additionally, 92% of respondents said they would be more encouraged to use citizen science in classrooms if projects were aligned to the curriculum. Identifying ways to increase teachers' openness to incorporate citizen science in their classrooms is crucial to its successful widespread, long-term, and meaningful implementation. Encouraging broader participation of teachers in citizen science based on their previous experiences could address their expectations and increase their confidence and feeling of ownership. These research findings suggest that meaningful and applicable citizen science programs could be co-created by addressing resource limitations and curriculum alignment challenges. Implementing solutions to these barriers is likely to contribute to the development of sustainable school-inclusive citizen science projects, with potential to positively impact science education in the long-term.

Citizen science represents an important opportunity for school students to make real-world connections with science through context-based learning with the potential to increase their engagement, enjoyment and understanding of science. However, to date, citizen science has not experienced wide uptake in school settings and there is a paucity of information about its implementation in the classroom. Here we present a mixed-method approach investigating teachers’ knowledge and use of citizen science in Australian classrooms. We explored teachers’ experience and perceptions of citizen science, and opportunities and barriers to incorporate citizen science as an educational approach through an online questionnaire. Among the teachers surveyed, 45% (n = 295) had personally participated in citizen science outside of school and 41% (n = 283) had incorporated citizen science projects in classroom lessons. Teachers (45%, n = 295) reported participating in citizen science initiatives multiple times. Also, most projects that teachers were involved in (77%, n = 292) were related to ecological studies, such as species monitoring. Citizen science was reported to be a relatively new approach; used by teachers for less than a year on average. The main challenges included a lack of knowledge, time, confidence, and clarity regarding citizen science project alignment with the Australian curriculum. Additionally, 92% of respondents said they would be more encouraged to use citizen science in classrooms if projects were aligned to the curriculum. Identifying ways to increase teachers’ openness to incorporate citizen science in their classrooms is crucial to its successful widespread, long-term, and meaningful implementation. Encouraging broader participation of teachers in citizen science based on their previous experiences could address their expectations and increase their confidence and feeling of ownership. These research findings suggest that meaningful and applicable citizen science programs could be co-created by addressing resource limitations and curriculum alignment challenges. Implementing solutions to these barriers is likely to contribute to the development of sustainable school-inclusive citizen science projects, with potential to positively impact science education in the long-term.

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Time and budgetary resources are often a limiting factor in the collection of large‐scale ecological data. If data collected by citizen scientists were comparable to data collected by researchers, it would allow for more efficient data collection over a broad geographic area. Here, we compare the quality of data on bat activity collected by citizens (high school students and teachers) and researchers. Both researchers and citizen scientists used the same comprehensive instructions when choosing study sites. We found no statistically significant difference in total bat activity minutes recorded by citizens and researchers. Instead, citizen scientists collected data from a wider variety of habitats than researchers. Involvement of citizens also increased the geographical coverage of data collection, resulting in the northernmost documentation of the Nathusius’s pipistrelle so far in Finland. Therefore, bat research can benefit from the use of citizen science when participants are given precise instructions and calibrated data collection equipment. Citizen science projects also have other far‐reaching benefits, increasing, for example, the scientific literacy and interest in natural sciences of citizens. Involving citizens in science projects also has the potential to enhance their willingness to conserve nature.

Along with the development of citizen science, more and more citizen science initiatives on soils are emerging. Soils are key components of ecosystems and from where 95% of our food originates. Because soils integrate multiple impacts of human activities, they are increasingly taken into account in public policies (agroecology, biodiversity, food, climate). This presentation will share the results of an online survey on agricultural soil citizen science across Europe. Most reported citizen science projects were at the national level (56%, n=40), limited in time (64.9%, n=40) because of funding (82.6%, n=23), with a budget less than 50.000 € (41.7%, n=36) and funded by a national research funding agency (47.2%, n=36). Regarding agricultural soil systems, half of citizen science projects studied urban or urban-countering gardening and 39% studied cropping systems, 29% fruit-vegetables and grassland systems, 18% arboriculture and vineyards. Over 57% of the reported projects have generated soil biodiversity data, 46% and 35% vegetation cover and soil organic carbon data, respectively. According to citizen science coordinators (n=33), the benefits for the scientists taking part in citizen science were ranging from publication of research outputs (69.7%) and learning opportunities (63.6%) to the potential to influence policy (45.5%). The reported benefits for the citizen scientists (n=33) ranged from learning opportunities (81.8%) and satisfaction through contributing to scientific evidence (72.7%) to publication of research outputs (24.2%). ‘Project very time consuming’ and ‘funding temporary’ were identified as the main research challenges for citizen science projects (n=31). ‘More staff resources’ was reported as the most important prerequisites for citizen science work followed by ‘more financial resources’ and ‘more recognition from academia for citizen science’ (n=28). This synthesis shows the state of the art in agricultural soil citizen science, but also the main lockers for citizen science development on soils.

A Place for Volunteers in Field Sciences

A recurrent complaint of members who attend ESA Annual Meetings is that the large number of concurrent sessions make it impossible to attend all the ones of interest. Symposium Reports from the ESA Annual Meeting is one response to this dilemma. They provide, for those who could not attend, an overview of the symposium presentations and the resulting discussion, as well as a convenient means to identify the presenters. And attendees can review the session! The Editor hopes these Reports are useful, and encourages future Symposium organizers to write Reports for the Bulletin when the presentations are given. For detailed instruction for contributions see: 〈http://esapubs.org/esapubs/journals/Bulletin.htm#Typ〉. Until recently if one were to ask "who is a scientist?" a common response would be, someone who works at a university or a government agency or in a laboratory. In other words, many of us tend to think of scientists as professionals who have been academically trained and conduct research through the auspices of a research institution, agency, nonprofit organization, or academic institution. Historically, though, individuals from outside this circle of professionals have been instrumental in shaping and contributing to science. In fact, some of the most renowned scientists and ecologists could be considered citizen scientists (e.g., Charles Darwin, Harold Mayfield, Alexander Skutch). But the view that the public could actively contribute to science faded greatly over the course of the 20th century (particularly in the United States) to such an extent that we were left with the view that only someone who was professionally trained could be a scientist. Recently, however, we have witnessed an increase in the extent and acceptability of public participation and engagement in science. In particular, over the past decade we have seen a marked increase in such "citizen science" (Fig. 1). Although explanations of citizen science vary slightly, they converge on this definition: the involvement of citizens from the nonscientific community in academic research (Trumbull et al. 2000, Lee et al. 2006). Historical trend of citizen science articles. Data represent peer-reviewed articles as identified in ISI Web of Science using the search term "citizen science" from 1980 through 2008. The number of unique articles (n = 55) published is indicated by "articles," and the number of unique citations (n = 353) is indicated by "citations." Because citizen science has seen a dramatic increase in recent years, both in terms of the number of participants and its spread into new disciplines, a symposium was held at the 2008 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting to address the role of such activity in ecology. Eleven speakers from around the world converged in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to share their work in "Citizen Science in Ecology: The Intersection of Research and Education," a symposium organized by Christopher Lepczyk, Owen Boyle, and Timothy Vargo. The goals of the symposium were to explore the following questions: (1) Is citizen science a new discipline, sub-discipline, or tool, relative to ecology? (2) Are data collected by citizen scientists valid, and if so, comparable to data collected by professional ecologists or their assistants? (3) Can citizen science be an effective tool to help bridge the gap between ecological research, communities, and education, both for the public and students? (4) Is citizen science the same as or different from ecological monitoring, or is one a subset of the other? (5) Are citizen scientists actively participating in the scientific process as ecologists, thus increasing their ecological literacy? To address these questions, speakers discussed citizen science both in general conceptual terms and in case-specific contexts from around the world. Rick Bonney of Cornell University opened the symposium with an overview of the history and evolution of citizen science in academic research. He explained that citizen science began as a series of monitoring projects designed to put the findings of hobbyists, such as bird watchers and star gazers, to meaningful scientific use. Following these early monitoring projects were ones designed with educational goals and even some set up as experiments. Eventually citizen science started to become an accepted technique for data collection in several scientific disciplines. Today, new citizen science efforts are involving participants in data analysis as well as data collection, and some are even starting to collect data from online images such as nestcams (readouts from recorders aimed at birds' nests). Following on the heels of the history of citizen science was a series of four case studies describing ecological research and monitoring projects that rely upon volunteers for their success. These case studies were arranged along a continuum from large-scale national projects with thousands of volunteers to regional and local projects. In addition, each case study represented varying degrees of interaction between researchers and volunteers. Leading off the case studies was David Ziolkowski of Patuxent Wildlife Refuge, who discussed how citizens drive the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). Specifically, the BBS protocol conducts annual bird surveys along >4000 routes (Fig. 2) across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, using a highly skilled volunteer workforce. Part of the success of the BBS program has been its relatively straightforward field protocol and standardized design. Moreover, the BBS program has resulted in over 400 bird species being surveyed annually at a cost of less than $900 per species per year. Without citizen scientists, such accomplishments could not be achieved. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, a long-running insect monitoring project has been led by citizen scientists in conjunction with Rothamsted Research, the oldest agricultural research station in the world. Philip Gould highlighted how the Rothamsted Insect Survey has used light traps (Fig. 3) to capture insects across 460 sites in the UK for the past 50 years. This survey takes about five minutes each day to collect insects, which are then sent to Rothamsted Research for sorting and identification of the macro-moth fraction of the catch. To ensure a robust monitoring project, volunteers are reimbursed for any trap maintenance and provided with annual summaries of the moths collected from their trap. The success of the program has been built upon: (1) keeping the monitoring system simple; (2) ensuring that the volunteers are trained; (3) knowing when to discontinue sites; and (4) providing all volunteers with feedback on their work. The value of the insect survey was demonstrated in recent findings that two-thirds of common moth species across the UK have declined over the last 35 years, with 20% declining so fast that they should be considered threatened. As a result, several more species have now been added to Biodiversity Action Plans in the UK. Both the BBS and the Rothamsted Insect Survey demonstrate how large-scale monitoring can be used to denote changes in diversity and abundance over time. Furthermore, they both use protocols to filter data, thereby allowing for robust data set production. Locations of breeding bird survey routes. Figure credit: Curtis Flahter and Mike Knowles. Examples of (A) a light trap station in use, and (B) placement in a back yard. Photo credits: (A) Syd Wright MBE, and (B) Philip Gould. At the regional scale, Susanne Masi, manager of Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern Program, presented an overview and findings from the garden's rare plant monitoring project. The Chicago Botanic Garden established this program to monitor listed and rare plants in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Initiated in 2001, the program involves ~250 trained volunteers each year in collecting plant data (Fig. 4), and has now accumulated 8+ years of standardized data on 205 plant species at 245 sites. Aside from simply monitoring rare plants, the program has demonstrated several key findings related to using citizen scientists. First, a two-year volunteer data validation study comparing randomly selected volunteer data to professional data showed a high degree of correlation between the two groups. For example, there was >80% correspondence between the two groups in critical data fields such as population numbers and presence of threats. Second, the results of a Plants of Concern citizen science focus group showed that volunteers participated actively in, and understood critical elements of, the scientific process. Furthermore, participants unanimously experienced an increase of their involvement in stewardship and conservation activities as a result of the program, and reported sharing this scientific understanding and enhanced conservation commitment with the broader public. Volunteers (A) determining plot locations and conducting rare and listed plant inventories (B–D) as part of the Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern Program. Photo credits: (A) Peter Jacobs, (B) Robin Carlson, (C) Emily Kapler, and (D) Dani Drekich. Capping off the case studies was a presentation by Bill Mueller, who introduced the Milwaukee County Avian Migration Monitoring Partnership (MCAMMP), an avian monitoring study focused on migratory bird stopover ecology in the urban parks of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. To date the project has utilized the assistance of >140 citizen scientists over six migrations (three years) to help address the major goals of assessing habitat use and quality in both riparian and upland sites, and quantifying habitat use by migratory birds. Citizen science volunteers involvement includes training for transect counts, assistance with bird-banding operations, vegetation sampling and analysis, and recording of data. One major aim of training the citizen scientists is that they will be able to establish a long-term, urban avian monitoring project that can expand in the future. The second main portion of the symposium was devoted to a set of talks on the issues of the philosophy, policy, and technology of citizen science. Rebecca Jordan began this second portion with a discussion of a framework for promoting ecological literacy within the context of citizen science programs. She stressed that program design must balance both the scientific goals, which include ensuring data accuracy, and educational goals. Together these goals promote conceptual knowledge about the system of study, epistemological knowledge about science processes, and behavioral change with respect to environmental and civic action. While there is much evidence to support the promotion of conceptual knowledge, the latter two areas warrant further investigation. Integrating cognitive and environmental action theory will likely prove useful as practitioners seek to broaden program impact. David Bonter of Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology next discussed the issue of data validation processes for large citizen science databases, such as Project FeederWatch. Currently, Project FeederWatch receives >100,000 checklists from >14,000 citizen scientists annually, yielding over 5,000,000 bird observations of ~500 individual species. Thus, it is critical that such large volumes of data be inspected for any problems; this requirement has led to the development of a quality control and quality assurance protocol. This protocol uses a review system, whereby unusual observations or potential errors are flagged and sent to experts for follow-up with the citizen scientists. Unverified reports remain flagged and are excluded from data analyses and web-based data output. The system also allows researchers to identify volunteers who are in need of support and to focus educational efforts accordingly, ultimately improving data quality and integrity. Moving from data editing to data collecting, Louis Liebenberg, founder of CyberTracker Conservation, presented a talk on how technology can be used to get people back in touch with nature. Specifically, Louis has developed the free software program CyberTracker (available at 〈http://www.cybertracker.org/〉), which enables volunteers of all ages to collect biodiversity data on simple portable devices, such as smartphones and PDAs (Fig. 5). CyberTracker is already in active use for both citizen science projects and environmental education around the world. For instance, in the United States, NatureMapping, BioKIDS, and BioBlitz are using PDAs with CyberTracker software to enable volunteers of all ages to collect biodiversity data. Similarly, in South Africa, the NaturalWorld web site allows participants to share and view bird sightings, and in the Kalahari trackers from local communities are being employed to survey wildlife conservation corridors. Finally, the WhaleForce project involves yachtsmen around the world using CyberTracker to monitor whales. Ultimately, the software allows for easy data collection by citizen scientists and helps to promote people who engage the outdoors by collecting field data. Bushmen in Africa using CyberTracker. Photo credit: Louis Liebenberg. Michelle Prysby next discussed more efficient ways for interested citizens to find a project, and for projects to find interested volunteers. One partnership for scientists and educators interested in reaching trained citizen scientists consists of the Master Naturalist programs. These programs are volunteer training and service programs that involve the public in natural resource education, citizen science, and stewardship. Currently there are >25 Master Naturalist programs in the United States that represent a ready pool of volunteers who have been trained in core citizen science skills, such as recording field observations and using taxonomic keys to identify organisms. These volunteers are well connected to their local environments, and are part of an existing infrastructure that can support their citizen science volunteer activities. (For more information on natural resource education and stewardship programs such as Master Naturalists, Watershed Stewards, and Conservation Stewards, please see the Alliance of Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs 〈http://www.anrosp.org〉). The final presentation of the morning was by Hague Vaughan, of Canada's Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN), who wove together the themes of the morning's talks. He described how citizen science fosters a desperately needed means to better link ecological monitoring to policy development and decision-making. His argument was that the emphasis on certainty in ecological monitoring leaves decision-makers lacking sentinel and feedback information where timeliness is a key factor. If focused on outcomes, complementary citizen science can be a means of enhancing effectiveness. To illustrate how to integrate citizen science into policy, Vaughan discussed a project that combined citizen data with targeted research and air quality monitoring stations in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to identify pollution and lichen hot-spots that was used to deliver feedback on municipal and industrial choices (Fig. 6). A map of arboreal lichens in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, based upon citizen science data. Darker green locations represent greater numbers of lichens, and points represent sampling locations. The symposium concluded with a round table discussion of the morning's talks. Following the symposium, an additional workshop on citizen science was held over the weekend at the Urban Ecology Center of Milwaukee. At this workshop many of the symposium speakers gave an additional talk during the morning portion, with an afternoon of hands-on activities designed to train and educate citizen scientists. Overall, the symposium sought to address five major goals related to citizen science. In reflecting upon these five goals it is clear that there was progress made on all, but not necessarily agreement. For instance, the general view was that citizen science has new elements to offer ecology, but there was no definitive agreement among the speakers that it was a new discipline or subdiscipline. Whether or not this will change remains to be seen; citizen science is still very much an area of new ideas and growth. On the other hand, several speakers presented data from their research illustrating that the quality of data collected by citizen scientists is of the same or better quality than that collected by professional ecologists. Such quality is enhanced further with the aid of both software (e.g., Project FeederWatch and CyberTracker) and expert assistance. Similarly, there was strong evidence that citizen science can be an effective tool to help bridge the gap between ecologists and the public. In terms of the overlap with monitoring, it is clear that they share a number of similarities and will likely continue to do so in the future. However, many of the citizen science projects were much broader than monitoring alone, because they engaged the public in the scientific process or served to enhance ecological literacy. Based upon the talks and concluding discussions, citizen science is an increasing part of ecology, and has great promise for contributing knowledge, improving ecological literacy, training scientists to work with the public, and providing information for policy-makers.

Divers have widely participated in citizen science (CS) projects and are one of the main groups of marine citizen scientists. However, there is little knowledge about profiles of, and incentives for potential divers to join CS projects. To date, most studies have focused on the SCUBA diving industry; nevertheless, there is a diversity of divers, not all using SCUBA, who engage in different activities during their dives. Differences in diver profiles could affect their willingness and ability to contribute to CS. In this study, we compare the diving profile, interests, preferences and motivations to participate in CS of five diver types (artisanal fishermen, recreational divers, instructors, scientific divers, and others). All divers have strong interests in participating in CS projects, with no major differences among diver types. In general, they are interested in a wide variety of themes related to CS but they prefer simple sampling protocols. Divers are motivated to participate in CS to learn about the sea and contribute to science. Some important differences among diver types were found, with artisanal fishermen having significantly more dive experience than other diver types, but less free time during their dives and limited access to some communication channels and technologies. These characteristics make them ideal partners to contribute their local ecological knowledge (LEK) to local CS projects. In contrast, recreational divers have the least experience but most free time during their dives and good access to cameras and communications channels, making them suitable partners for large-scale CS projects that do not require a high level of species knowledge. Instructors and scientific divers are well-placed to coordinate and supervise CS activities. The results confirm that divers are not all alike and specific considerations have to be taken into account to improve the contribution of each diver type to CS. The findings provide essential information for the design of different types of CS projects. By considering the relevant incentives and opportunities for diverse diver groups, marine CS projects will make efficient gains in volunteer recruitment, retention, and collaborative generation of knowledge about the marine environment.

Climate change and biodiversity loss require us to engage the next generation of scientists in addressing global ecological issues. Introducing undergraduate students to citizen science allows them to learn scientific processes and content while contributing to real‐world applications. We conducted a systematic review of literature to (1) identify what types of undergraduate courses and institutions use citizen science, (2) list the projects and platforms that have been implemented in online courses in undergraduate education, (3) examine how students participated in the projects through online courses, and (4) summarize learning objectives and reported benefits of student participation. In all, 44 studies about the use of citizen science in undergraduate online courses were found in 25 papers in the published literature. The most common projects consisted of classification of species or natural history (e.g., iNaturalist), which could be done mainly online but with data collection completed at a location available to the student. Citizen science projects were incorporated into multiple course formats (e.g., lecture, lab) and class sizes, and students were most frequently asked to collect and submit data. The most frequently reported learning outcomes included increased student interest/engagement, improved appreciation for the relevance of science to the “real world,” and practice using the scientific process, but rigorous assessment data were lacking in papers. The use of citizen science in online courses and institutions appears to be increasing, and we encourage faculty using these approaches with students to publish on their efforts, providing details about their implementation, assessment, and course context.

Citizen science comes of age

Citizen science (CS) projects are part of a new era of data aggregation and harmonisation that facilitates interconnections between different datasets. Increasing the value and reuse of CS data has received growing attention with the appearance of the FAIR principles and systematic research data management (RDM) practises, which are often promoted by university libraries. However, RDM initiatives in CS appear diversified and if CS have special needs in terms of RDM is unclear. Therefore, the aim of this article is firstly to identify RDM challenges for CS projects and secondly, to discuss how university libraries may support any such challenges. A scoping review and a case study of Danish CS projects were performed to identify RDM challenges. 48 articles were selected for data extraction. Four academic project leaders were interviewed about RDM practices in their CS projects. Challenges and recommendations identified in the review and case study are often not specific for CS. However, finding CS data, engaging specific populations, attributing volunteers and handling sensitive data including health data are some of the challenges requiring special attention by CS project managers. Scientific requirements or national practices do not always encompass the nature of CS projects. Based on the identified challenges, it is recommended that university libraries focus their services on 1) identifying legal and ethical issues that the project managers should be aware of in their projects, 2) elaborating these issues in a Terms of Participation that also specifies data handling and sharing to the citizen scientist, and 3) motivating the project manager to good data handling practises. Adhering to the FAIR principles and good RDM practices in CS projects will continuously secure contextualisation and data quality. High data quality increases the value and reuse of the data and, therefore, the empowerment of the citizen scientists.

The growth of citizen science presents a valuable potential source of calibration and validation data for environmental remote sensing at greater spatial and temporal scales, and with greater cost efficiency than is achievable by professional in situ reference-data collection alone. However, the frequent mismatch between in situ data-quality requirements for remote-sensing-product development and current data quality assurance in citizen science presents a significant challenge if widespread use of these complementary data sources is to be achieved. To evaluate the scope of this challenge, we conducted a targeted literature review into the nature of data-quality issues faced by citizen-science projects for routine incorporation into terrestrial environmental-monitoring systems. From the literature, we identify the challenges and trade-offs to inform best-practice implementation of data quality assurance in citizen-science projects. To assist practitioners in implementing our findings, we grouped these themes by stage of citizen-science project: (1) program planning and design; (2) participant engagement; (3) data collection; and (4) data processing. As a final step, we used our findings as the basis to formulate guiding questions that can be used to inform decision making when choosing optimal data-quality-improvement and assurance strategies for use of citizen science in remote-sensing calibration and/or validation. Our aim is to enhance future development of citizen-science projects for use with remote sensing in environmental monitoring.