Abstract
AbstractAdequate infrastructure for citizen science is constantly growing and has become increasingly important in providing support to citizen science activities, both nationally and internationally. Many types of citizen science infrastructures exist, with different functionalities. This chapter focuses on current citizen science platforms. The platforms addressed in this chapter are those which display citizen science data and information, provide good practical examples and toolkits, collect relevant scientific outcomes, and are accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens to scientific institutions to authorities, politicians, and public media. We present current citizen science platforms in Europe and associated (inter)national citizen science networks and discuss how these platforms have become increasingly vital within citizen science. Based on these examples, we elaborate on challenges for citizen science platforms, such as establishing and financing platforms, designing user interfaces, maintaining platforms, promoting the usage of platforms, etc. We conclude with an outlook into potential development needs of citizen science platforms in the future.
Highlights
Adequate infrastructure for citizen science is constantly growing and has become increasingly important in providing support to citizen science activities, both nationally and internationally
What we might once have called a meeting, conference, partnership, or a network may be branded as a platform – as in the case of the collective awareness platforms (CAPS)1 for sustainability and social innovation (Bellini et al 2016); the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Bongaarts 2019); and the Knowledge base for the Sustainable Development Goals (KnowSDGs) platform, from the European Commission (EC), among others
Citizen science platforms are web-based infrastructures with one single entrance point that contain one or several of the following functionalities: (1) present active citizen science projects and activities; (2) display citizen science data and information; (3) provide overall guidelines and tools that can be used to support citizen science projects and activities in general; (4) present good practice examples and lessons learned; and (5) offer relevant scientific outcomes for people who are involved or interested in citizen science
Summary
We give an overview of current citizen science platforms in Europe, with a few concrete examples that meet our definition of citizen science platforms. There are many citizen science platforms in Europe. A commercial citizen science platform often brings together a willing buyer and seller to facilitate a bilateral market exchange, while other types of citizen science platforms have great potential to orchestrate a multilateral (as opposed to bilateral) collaborative relationship (as opposed to market exchange) (Ansell and Gash 2018). Commercial platforms offer their services to customers for profit. Several commercial platforms for citizen science (e.g. SPOTTERON and CitizenLab) have started
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
