Citizen Science Research Research Articles

Citizen Science in Biomedicine: Attitudes, Motivation, and Concerns of the General Public and Scientists in Latvia

Citizen science is research carried out by citizens in cooperation with scientists based on scientifically developed methods. Citizen science makes science accessible to the public and promotes public trust. Since there is scarce evidence about attitudes toward citizen science in the field of biomedicine, we aimed to evaluate the attitudes, motivations, and concerns of the Latvian general population and scientists from the biomedical research field toward citizen science research projects. We developed a survey that consisted of seven different citizen science research project examples (vignettes) and circulated it among the Latvian general population and researchers online, collecting quantitative and qualitative data. In total 314 individuals from the general population and 49 researchers filled in the survey. After the analysis was performed, we concluded that the general population and biomedical scientists in Latvia have different expectations toward citizen science. The results showed that while the general public is more interested in individual and societal benefits and concerned with specific participation aspects like filming, photographing, or co-funding, the scientists see the biggest potential contribution to their project in aspects of additional data collection and potential financial support, and are concerned about data quality, potential legal issues, and additional coordination communication that would be needed.

A framework for making citizen science inclusive with storytelling methods

Citizen science is challenged by a participation inequality that is not compatible with a democratic approach to science. To include the voices of underrepresented groups, this article presents “STORCIT”, a framework for making citizen science inclusive with storytelling methods. This framework was trialed in the project “Climate Stories” with two small-scale pilot studies in Hasselt and Brussels (Belgium). This project involved around 50 young people with a diverse background, since they are often overlooked as agents of change in the climate debate. During the project, they recorded their experiences related to the changing climate through citizen science and storytelling methods. The STORCIT-framework was designed through five consecutive phases: i) setting the scene, ii) generating knowledge and learning, iii) sharing personal narratives iv) developing stories, and v) exhibiting to the public. The results reflect on the implementation of this approach, together with the experienced challenges, limitations, and gains. Overall, the approach is highly participatory, multi-faceted and supports the democratization of knowledge generation. The gathered knowledge helps participants to reflect on their story, raise their voice and catalyze actions for social change. In the context of citizen science research, practitioners are encouraged to explore and further adapt this framework to other (justice) domains and involve other vulnerable target groups. In particular, it can be deployed by those who aim to include diverse audiences and stimulate inclusive dialogue between science, society and policy with actions for social change.

Bridging communities and schools in Urban development: community and citizen science

This paper presents the results of two community and citizen science research projects – Cities at Play and Community Drive – in which young students (aged 11–15) from vulnerable residential areas in Copenhagen, Denmark, collaborated with architects and urban developers to engage in urban development initiatives in their neighborhoods. An educational design was developed over the two research projects in which students underwent phases of discovery, interpretation, ideation, and experimentation. Data were collected from surveys, observations, and interviews to elucidate the ways that three bridges central to community and citizen science projects can function. These include professional (bridges student learning in school and professional communities outside school), citizen (bridges student learning in school and local communities), and student (bridges student learning in school and new student communities) bridges. This research makes both theoretical and practical advancements. Theoretically, it advances our thinking about the diverse roles that participants in multi-sector partnerships can have, as well as how CCS widens the view of cultural asset-based learning by viewing students as experts of their local communities. Practically, we offer four guidelines that were gleaned from the results that can be instructive for the design of future educational community and citizen science projects.

Best practice guidelines for citizen science in mental health research: systematic review and evidence synthesis.

Partnering with people most affected by mental health problems can transform mental health outcomes. Citizen science as a research approach enables partnering with the public at a substantial scale, but there is scarce guidance on its use in mental health research. To develop best practise guidelines for conducting and reporting research, we conducted a systematic review of studies reporting mental health citizen science research. Documents were identified from electronic databases (n = 10), grey literature, conference proceedings, hand searching of specific journals and citation tracking. Document content was organised in NVIVO using the ten European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) citizen science principles. Best practise guidelines were developed by (a) identifying approaches specific to mental health research or where citizen science and mental health practises differ, (b) identifying relevant published reporting guidelines and methodologies already used in mental health research, and (c) identifying specific elements to include in reporting studies. A total of 14,063 documents were screened. Nine studies were included, from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the United States. Citizen scientists with lived experience of mental health problems were involved in data collection, analysis, project design, leadership, and dissemination of results. Most studies reported against some ECSA principles but reporting against these principles was often unclear and unstated. Best practise guidelines were developed, which identified mental health-specific issues relevant to citizen science, and reporting recommendations. These included citizen science as a mechanism for empowering people affected by mental health problems, attending to safeguarding issues such as health-related advice being shared between contributors, the use of existing health research reporting guidelines, evaluating the benefits for contributors and impact on researchers, explicit reporting of participation at each research stage, naming the citizen science platform and data repository, and clear reporting of consent processes, data ownership, and data sharing arrangements. We conclude that citizen science is feasible in mental health and can be complementary to other participatory approaches. It can contribute to active involvement, engagement, and knowledge production with the public. The proposed guidelines will support the quality of citizen science reporting.

Is Laughter Really the Best Medicine? Reflecting on a Mental Health Initiative Using Pragmatic Collaborative Autoethnography

This article relates to the potential of applied laughter in social science. Here, we explore the “Laughie Challenge Australia.” This community-based mental health initiative aims to get Australians laughing. We invite its instigator to discuss it, using a pragmatic qualitative research approach, Invited Collaborative Autoethnography (ICAE). Our purpose is to gain insight into the rationale and practicalities of using laughter to alleviate community mental health issues. Thus, we use ICAE instrumentally as a discourse platform to build understanding through joint narrative with a view of facilitating laughter community-science research collaborations. We recount the “story” of the Laughie Challenge, and the meeting of two academics and a community laughter leader, with a shared interest in the healing power of laughter and “real-world” laughter applications. ICAE enabled transparent, in-depth discourse. It has resulted in citizen science research to further advance knowledge in this area.

Including citizens through co-design in a participatory research project to explore innovative agro-food systems: the case of future dairy livestock systems

IntroductionLivestock farming and its negative impacts are increasingly criticized by society; its evolution toward more sustainable systems is therefore a key aspect of the transition of agro-food systems. It is necessary to rethink livestock systems' research and innovation processes and develop innovative solutions. Including citizens, non-professionals of the sector, who are less influenced by the current organization of the agricultural sector could be an opportunity to generate innovative solutions, but they have been kept away from research and innovation processes so far.MethodsIn this context, we implemented a co-design process involving researchers, livestock professionals, and citizens in a participatory research project aiming at producing knowledge and developing innovative solutions for the future mountain dairy systems. For this, we have adapted the KCP design method known to promote the exploration of innovative solutions, support the agro-ecological transition, and build a common horizon.ResultsThe analysis of this collective dynamic and its outputs allowed us to highlight the positive contribution of citizens during the design process, even if they are not livestock experts. The citizens participated in the formulation of new knowledge by questioning the researchers and livestock professionals and were less influenced by the current system. This contributed to the exploration of original and varied solutions for livestock farming systems.DiscussionThis experimentation offers perspectives for including citizens in agro-food systems research and innovation process. It also opens up interesting perspectives for the fields of citizen science and co-design research.

Climate change, young people, and the IPCC: The role of citizen science

This commentary suggests that undertaking citizen science research with young people has the potential to play a significant role in contributing to the IPPC and related UN research and policy processes around climate change. Further, citizen science engagement can educate and empower children and young people in and through research by involving wider communities and groups in data collection, communication, and engagement. A persuasive body of literature suggests that children and youth can be and ought to be included in citizen science projects and that young people ought to and can have a greater say in their environmental and climate lives and futures. There is acknowledgment that certain populations, including young people, have been excluded from participation in citizen science, and strategies need to be developed to be more inclusive. Moreover, through inclusion of youth, there are opportunities for intergeneration collaboration leading to potential solutions. Our commentary is a call for the IPCC to be much more open and creative in its knowledge production work and to engage young people in climate-related citizen science.

Attitudes Toward Engagement in Citizen Science Increase Self-Related, Ecology-Related, and Motivation-Related Outcomes in an Urban Wildlife Project.

Citizen science projects are crucial for engaging citizens in conservation efforts. Although attitudes toward engagement in citizen science were mostly considered an outcome of citizen science participation, citizens may also have a certain attitude toward engagement in citizen science when starting with a citizen science project. Moreover, there is a lack of citizen science studies that consider changes over longer periods of time. Therefore, in this research, we present two-wave data from four field studies of a citizen science project about urban wildlife ecology using cross-lagged panel analyses. We investigated the influence of attitudes toward engagement in citizen science on self-related, ecology-related, and motivation-related outcomes. We found that positive attitudes toward engagement in citizen science at the beginning of the project had positive influences on the participants' psychological ownership and pride in their participation, their attitudes toward and enthusiasm about wildlife, and their internal and external motivation 2 months later. We discuss the implications for citizen science research and practice.

Show don't tell: Engaging the public in language science through a participatory experiment

This article describes a novel program of language science engagement, called CogSciDIY: Language Science. This program combines features from citizen science and participatory-action research in an innovative way to promote science understanding. Language science is rarely covered in these domains, so the program provides a unique opportunity for nonlinguists to learn more about the field. Using an interactive online platform, members of the general public assisted a research team in identifying a research question, designing an experiment to test that question, and interpreting the results of the experiment. The program provided guided support for the participants to learn about both language science content and the scientific method more generally. User outcomes in the form of participation analytics and an internal evaluation survey suggest that this program has promise for helping the general public to better understand the scientific dimensions of language study.

Trust Architectures in Research

The research enterprise depends on trust, especially trust in data reliability and ethical conduct of research. This trust is accomplished via systems, or “architectures,” that do the work of ensuring trustworthiness in research when individuals are not able to assess it for themselves. In the United States and many other countries, national laws or regulations constitute the research ethics trust architecture. But new research methods, such as citizen science, DIY biology, biohacking, or corporate research, avoid such regulations because they draw on new means of funding, disseminating, and conducting research. This challenges the sufficiency of the traditional approach and requires us to revisit how we generate trust in the research enterprise. In this article, I discuss how new research challenges the existing trust architecture, offer some necessary elements of trust architecture in general, and use citizen science as a case study to illustrate how new, ethically meaningful trust architectures could be built.

Embedding citizens within airborne microplastic and microfibre research

Abstract Microplastics are ubiquitous in our environment but their presence in air is less well understood. Homes are likely a key source of airborne microplastics and microfibres to the environment owing to the frequent use and storage of plastics and textiles within them. Studying their presence, concentration and distribution in these environments is difficult without the participation of citizens due to accessibility challenges. Few studies have examined the intricacies of the prevalence of indoor microplastics and microfibres or the link between indoor exposure and behavioural and regulatory approaches that could reduce their concentrations. The application of a quintuple innovation helix framework, within which a co-creative citizen science research methodology is applied, provides an opportunity for citizens to shape the scientific method, ensuring that methods are accessible and appropriate for widespread use and designed by the citizen, for the citizen. Exploring behaviours and motivations in plastic and textile use by citizens with industry may reduce the generation of these particles. Future studies should consider the importance of citizen inclusion when designing research strategies for measuring and reducing microplastic concentrations in homes, enabling a nuanced understanding of their generation and distribution and facilitating the development of appropriate behavioural, industrial and regulatory messaging and mitigative measures.

Accounting for among-sampler variability improves confidence in fuel moisture content field measurements

Background Direct fuel moisture content measurements are critical for characterising spatio-temporal variations in fuel flammability and for informing fire danger assessments. However, among-sampler variability (systematic differences in measurements between samplers) likely contributes to fuel moisture measurement variability in most field campaigns. Aims We assessed the magnitude of among-sampler variability in plot-scale Calluna vulgaris fuel moisture measurements. Methods Seventeen individuals collected samples from six fuel layers hourly from 10:00 hours to 18:00 hours. We developed mixed effects models to estimate the among-sampler variability. Key results Fuel moisture measurements were highly variable between individuals sampling within the same plot, fuel layer, and time of day. The importance of among-sampler variability in explaining total measured fuel moisture variance was fuel layer dependent. Among-sampler variability explained the greatest amount of measurement variation in litter (58%) and moss (45%) and was more important for live (19%) than dead (4%) Calluna. Conclusions Both consideration of samplers within the experimental design and incorporation of sampler metadata during statistical analysis will improve understanding of spatio-temporal fuel moisture dynamics obtained from field-based studies. Implications Accounting for among-sampler variability in fuel moisture campaigns opens opportunities to utilise sampling teams and citizen science research to examine fuel moisture dynamics over large spatio-temporal scales.

Our Voice in a rural community: empowering Colombian adolescents to advocate for school community well-being through citizen science

BackgroundSanta Ana is home to an Afro-descendant rural population of the island of Barú in Cartagena, Colombia. While a popular area for tourism, Santa Ana’s population is affected by multidimensional poverty, precarious work conditions, homelessness, broken streets and sewer systems, limited quality education, and a lack of recreation and sport spaces. While Santa Ana’s Community Action Board aims to unify efforts and resources to solve these problems, the state’s capacity to meet the requirements of the Board is limited.MethodsWe evaluated the relationship between healthy lifestyles and characteristics of Santa Ana’s school using the Our Voice Citizen Science Research Method. This systemic approach combines information and communication technologies with group facilitation to empower adolescents to: 1) collect and discuss data about factors in their local environments that facilitate or hinder well-being within their school community; 2) identify relevant local stakeholders who could help to address the issues identified; and 3) advocate collectively for local improvements to support increased well-being at a community level.ResultsEleven citizen scientists ages 13 to 17 years from the science club of Institución Educativa Santa Ana were recruited and together conducted 11 walks within the school to collect data about the facilitators and barriers to student well-being. They identified barriers to well-being related to school infrastructure, furniture, bathrooms, and sense of belonging. They then advocated with school stakeholders and reached agreements on concrete actions to address identified barriers, including fostering a culture among students of caring for school property and presenting their findings to the community action board. This methodology allowed the community to realize how students can become agents of change and take collective action when motivated by solution-oriented methodologies such as Our Voice. Project ripple effects, including greater empowerment and participation in collective actions by students, also were observed.ConclusionsThis study underscores the importance of the school’s built environment in the well-being of students in rural areas. The Our Voice method provided the opportunity to inform school-based interventions, and promoted ripple effects that expanded productive dialogue to the community level and generated systemic actions involving actors outside of the school community.

Biomedical Citizen Science at the National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest funding agency for biomedical and behavioral research in the United States, supporting basic, translational, and clinical research to drive discoveries and knowledge that enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. The NIH invests in research that runs the gamut from basic biological mechanisms to innovative device development; environmental public health; and behavioral, implementation, and population sciences. Citizen science methodologies and approaches have broadened opportunities for public involvement across the full spectrum of biomedical research. The NIH has a long history of supporting citizen science and public-partnered research. It is challenging to estimate the investment that NIH has made in citizen science given the diverse fields, program types, and project organization that NIH-supported citizen science exemplifies and the expansion into related disciplines. The common thread through these diverse programs is a meaningful partnership with the public as direct collaborators and participants. Here, we describe unique examples of successful biomedical citizen science and community-engaged research projects that are hosted by NIH or that have received NIH support, and highlight the different terms used to encourage and report on citizen science and related methodologies.

An Ethics Framework for Evaluating Ownership Practices in Biomedical Citizen Science.

The collaborative nature of citizen science raises important questions about managing ownership of its research outputs. Potential citizen science research outputs include data sets, findings, publications, and discoveries of new ideas, methods, products, and technologies. Unlike citizen science projects conducted in other disciplines, biomedical citizen science projects often include features, such as contribution of personal health data, that might heighten citizen scientists' expectations that they will be able to access, control, or share in the benefits of project outputs. Here, we refer to moral claims of access, control, and benefit as ownership claims, and a project's management of ownership claims as its ownership practices. Ethical management of ownership is widely recognized as an important consideration for citizen science projects, and practitioners and scholars have described helpful recommendations for preempting issues and engaging stakeholders on practices. Building on this literature, we propose a framework to help biomedical citizen science projects systematically evaluate the ethical soundness of their ownership practices based on four considerations: reciprocal treatment, relative treatment, risk-benefit assessment, and reasonable expectations.

The "Our Voice" Method: Participatory Action Citizen Science Research to Advance Behavioral Health and Health Equity Outcomes.

Citizen science research that more fully engages the community can systematically involve people from under-resourced groups to create practical health-enhancing improvements across physical, social and food environments. Exemplary health equity-focused outcomes include key health behaviors (e.g., healthy eating or physical activity) and community-level changes (e.g., public transit to food shops) that are central to health promotion while being demonstrably impacted by local environmental contexts. Yet, few examples of this approach are readily available for application within complex, community-based settings. In this paper, we present the Our Voice (OV) four-step method to demonstrate an integrated participatory citizen science approach and its usability for action-focused researchers and community health practitioners. In addition, we present a summary of the major research, processes, and community outcomes, with examples drawn from nutrition and healthy food access areas, among others. Finally, we explore the hallmark features of the OV method that effectively engage citizen scientists, empowering action and fostering solution-building across social and environmental structures impacting community health. Expanding research that marries participatory research philosophies with innovative citizen science methods, supported by systematic data collection, visualization, and delivery technologies, in turn provides a powerful toolkit for tackling local to global health equity challenges.

Open Science, the alliance way

Universities are challenged with creating an enabling environment for Open Science, including policies, technical infrastructure, services, training and support and cross-cutting issues such as FAIR research data management and Open Access. In many universities, staff and skills to supply are in high demand and the level of implementation is often lower than the strategic importance given to Open Science (EUA, 2021). Collaboration is crucial to address these challenges, be efficient and avoid duplication of efforts across higher education institutions and other stakeholders. European university alliances are one mechanism that supports such collaborations (Council of the EU, 2021). In the EUTOPIA European University, an alliance consisting of 10 member universities from across Europe, an ambitious work programme has been developed and is implemented through several projects funded by Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020. EUTOPIA understands Open Science as a core pillar, recognizing that knowledge needs to be accessible for everyone. Therefore, our alliance aims to mainstream Open Science across the network and create closer policy alignment between individual alliance members. We do so by addressing different dimensions relevant for Open Science, from policies over to joint training and support, as well as coordinating these activities across the alliance and policy alignment (implemented in a subsidiary way). Overall, our activities cover: Building technical infrastructure, although challenging across institutional and national boundaries, through a collaboration with OpenAIRE. This will facilitate FAIRness of our research results and FAIR-compliance of institutional repositories. Training and guidance on crucial issues such as research data management, Open Access, Citizen Science, and reproducible research for different target audiences. A framework policy for research assessment & metrics considering Open Science as a cross-cutting issue. Citizen science receives special attention through the establishment of a community of practice and regular citizen science clinics, informal meet-ups to share experience, approaches and challenges in Citizen Science. A template Open Science policy to be implemented in modular fashion by partner universities and the creation of an alliance-wide Open Science office. In short, European Universities are an important vehicle for connecting Open Science expertise and capacity across higher education institutions. They allow for the integration and efficient use of local expertise and networks for the benefit of the academic community of all members. Moreover, they are platforms for experimentation and sharing experience among partners with a focus on producing tangible results and improvements. We believe that alliances such as EUTOPIA are important tools to advance Open Science in Europe.

Long-Term Ringing Data on Migrating Passerines Reveal Overall Avian Decline in Europe

The loss of biodiversity is shaping today’s environment. Bird ringing is a citizen science research tool that can determine species population dynamics and trends over a large geographic area. We used a 17-year time series to assess population trends of 74 passerine species based on ringing data from autumn migration in Slovenia (south-central Europe). We defined seven guilds of species according to geographic location, ecological, migratory, breeding, and life-history traits. Almost all guilds showed declining trends, except for the group of species of northeastern European origin, which showed a stable trend. The greatest decline was in low-productivity wetland specialists. Forest birds, seed-eaters, and high-productivity species experienced the smallest declines. The general declines in avifauna across a range of life-history and behavioural traits, and across a range of spatial and ecological scales, suggest widespread environmental change in Europe. Our data indicates that recent trends are toward ecosystem homogeneity, with an impoverished avifauna, including a few species that are increasing in abundance. These are the species with higher productivity and flexible behaviour, such as short-distance migrants, that have the greatest chance of prevailing in the recently rapidly changing environment because of their ability to adapt to changes in a timely manner.

Exploring the potential role of citizen science in the warning value chain for high impact weather

Preparing and delivering warnings to the public involves a chain of processes spanning different organizations and stakeholders from numerous disciplines. At each stage of this warning chain, relevant groups apply their expertise, but sharing information and transmission of data between groups is often imperfect. In diverse research fields, citizen science has been valuable in filling gaps through contributing local data. However, there is limited understanding of citizen science's role in bridging gaps in the warning value chain. Citizen science research projects could help improve the various aspects of the warning value chain by providing observations and evaluation, data verification and quality control, engagement and education on warnings, and improvement of accessibility for warnings. This paper explores the research question: How can citizen science contribute to the warning value chain? Two workshops were held with 29 experts on citizen science and the warning value chain to answer this question from a high impact weather perspective. The results from this study have shown that citizens, at individual or collective capacity, interact throughout the chain, and there are many prospects for citizen science projects for observations, weather, hazard, and impact forecasting, to warning communication and decision making. The study also revealed that data quality control is a main challenge for citizen science. Despite having limitations, the findings have shown that citizen science can be a platform for increasing awareness and creating a sense of community that adds value and helps bridge gaps in the warning value chain.

Farming in the mountains of Nepal: crops, soil fertility, livelihoods and farm-forest linkages

In national plans, policies, and earlier development programs, livelihoods of mountain people in the Nepal Himalayas were overlooked, rendering them more susceptible to climatic risk and disaster. The management of marginal mountain agricultural land is crucial for food security, improved living conditions, and environmental protection. For enhancing livelihoods and ecological benefits, mountain agriculture is vital, however, a consolidated review on mountain farming is limited in Nepal. We used "mountain" AND "Nepal" AND "farming" OR "agriculture" in the literature's title published between 1978 and 2021 on Google Scholar and did an in-depth review of papers on the four thematic areas: mountain crops, soil fertility, livelihoods, and farm-forestry linkages. We observed a variety of nutrient-rich mountain crops with a market potential as niche products, low and deteriorating soil fertility of agricultural lands, a weakening of the farm-forest links, and an increase in the diversity of mountain livelihood choices. Small landholdings, labor outmigration mainly men, feminization of mountain farming, and food insecurity are the greatest challenges to the growth of agriculture in mountainous regions. There are, however, ample opportunities to make mountain regions green through agroforestry and community forests, to improve livelihoods by introducing niche value chains for products, to explore payment for ecosystem services through downstream-upstream linkages, and to recognize their traditional knowledge and practices through citizen science research and development.