Citizen science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Citizen science is a term used for a project or ongoing program of scientific work in which a network of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or computation.

The use of such networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible. In addition, these projects aim to promote public engagement with the research, as well as with science in general. Some programs provide materials specifically for use by primary or secondary school students. As such, citizen science is one approach to informal science education.

The longest-running currently active citizen science project is probably the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, which started in 1900. Other well-known examples of citizen science programs include World Water Monitoring Day, NASA's Stardust@home and Clickworkers, and a variety of projects run by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Distributed computing ventures such as SETI@home may also be considered citizen science, even though the primary task of computation is performed by volunteers' computers. The Nicodemus Wilderness Project offers a service-learning approach to citizen science, where youth volunteers take individual action as environmental stewards and write essays about their educational experience.

Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University's Communication and S&TS departments points out two additional usages of the terms "citizen science" and "citizen scientist:"

Citizen Science also refers to the science and technology program of SustainUS, the U.S. youth network for sustainable development; the program holds an annual Citizen Scientist contest that recognizes young people who write about science for lay and policy audiences in the United States.

(2) the engagement of nonscientists in true decision-making about policy issues that have technical or scientific components; and (3) the engagement of research scientists in the democratic and policy process.^[1]