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Citizen science is growing and increasingly realizing its potential in terms of benefiting science and society. However, there are significant barriers to engaging participants in non-Western, non-educated, non-industrialised, non-rich and non-democratic contexts. By reflecting on the experiences of 15 citizen science project coordinators, this paper contributes to the small but growing body of knowledge attempting to identify barriers and opportunities of doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities. Challenges affecting participation in the analysed projects include issues that range from lack of basic infrastructure and participant safety to unbalanced knowledge hierarchies and data rights. We found that, to overcome these challenges, projects have used several strategies, from promoting decentralized and low-tech solutions to engaging in bottom-up actions from a human-rights approach. Finally, our analysis of project impacts supports the idea that doing citizen science with marginalised and Indigenous communities might have a greater impact for participants than for science, as scientific achievements (although valuable) were not among the most important impacts highlighted in terms of project success. By providing stories from the field in a structured way, we aim to guide, to inform, and to inspire other citizen science projects, and to, ultimately, contribute to broader participation in citizen science in the future.

Humanity is currently confronted with a series of profound existential crises. Beneath it all lies a crisis of meaning, of being able to make sense of the world. If we are to overcome this situation, we need robust scientific knowledge of the world and our place within it. However, science is facing a number of serious challenges to meet these needs of society. One reason for this is that science often fails to fulfil the unrealistic expectations it has set itself to meet. Such expectations are generated by an outdated view of knowledge production, which persists among many members of the public and scientists alike. This has led to an ultra-competitive system of academic research, which sacrifices long-term productivity through an excessive obsession with short-term efficiency. Efforts to diversify this system come from a movement called democratic citizen science. Here, we argue that this kind of citizen science can serve as a model for scientific inquiry in general. It requires an alternative theory of knowledge with a focus on the role that diversity plays in the process of discovery. Here, we present such an epistemology, which is based on three central philosophical pillars: perspectival realism, a naturalistic process-based epistemology, and deliberative social practices. Together, these three pillars broaden our focus from immediate research outcomes towards the cognitive and social processes which shape research strategies that facilitate sustainable long-term productivity and scientific innovation. They provide a general paradigm and template for scientific inquiry in the 21st century, which marks a shift from an industrial to an ecological vision of how scientific research should be done, and how it should be assessed. At its core are research communities that are diverse, representative, and democratic. This leads to a new, processual, paradigm of scientific project management, monitoring, and assessment, which is outlined in the last section of our paper.

The vision for the EU-Citizen.Science platform is to aid in the mainstreaming of citizen science, bybuilding a sustainable platform as a learning space for citizen science in Europe for researchers,citizen science practitioners, policy makers, journalists, citizen scientists and other stakeholdergroups. To achieve this aim, the project supports the development of ~20 training modules on awide variety of CS-related subjects, aimed at this range of stakeholder groups. This Deliverablepresents 24 training modules, 17 of which are from various Consortium partners and not thepromised 3 but 10 modules developed by Cascading Grants awardees, drawing on the expertisefrom 10 institutions or individuals outside the Consortium. We describe the Moodle platform andthe structure and topics of these training modules, the training and evaluation processes used increating them, and the protocol created for future users of the eu-citizen.science platform who maychoose to create their own training modules during the years 2022-2027. We also report how webuilt on our earlier work identifying specific training gaps in the field of CS, using a survey and aworkshop to select the topics of the modules and widening the scope of topics and availablelanguages with the call for Cascading Grants. Finally, this Deliverable concludes with somerecommendations for maintaining the sustainability of this platform, highlights potential topics forfurther training modules to be written in the future and provides some recommendations based onlessons learned for other CS Projects who may wish to provide CS training in the future.

Analysing patterns of engagement among citizen science participants can provide important insights into the organisation and practice of individual citizen science projects. In particular, methods from statistics and network science can be used to understand different types of user behaviour and user interactions to help the further implementation and organization of community efforts. Using publicly available data from the iNaturalist community and their yearly City Nature Challenges (CNC) from 2017-2020 as an example; we showcase computational methods to explore the spatio-temporal evolution of this citizen science community that typically interacts in a hybrid offline-online way. In particular, we investigate the user types present in the community along with their interactions, finding significant differences in usage-behavior on both the level of engagement and the types of community tasks/roles and how they interact with the network of contributors. We expect that these computational analysis strategies will be useful to gain further understanding of other citizen science communities and projects., 9 figures, 29 pages, submitted to https://theoryandpractice.citizenscienceassociation.org

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can augment and sometimes even replace human cognition. Inspired by efforts to value human agency alongside productivity, we discuss the benefits of solving Citizen Science (CS) tasks with Hybrid Intelligence (HI), a synergetic mixture of human and artificial intelligence. Currently there is no clear framework or methodology on how to create such an effective mixture. Due to the unique participant-centered set of values and the abundance of tasks drawing upon both human common sense and complex 21st century skills, we believe that the field of CS offers an invaluable testbed for the development of HI and human-centered AI of the 21st century, while benefiting CS as well. In order to investigate this potential, we first relate CS to adjacent computational disciplines. Then, we demonstrate that CS projects can be grouped according to their potential for HI-enhancement by examining two key dimensions: the level of digitization and the amount of knowledge or experience required for participation. Finally, we propose a framework for types of human-AI interaction in CS based on established criteria of HI. This "HI lens" provides the CS community with an overview of several ways to utilize the combination of AI and human intelligence in their projects. It also allows the AI community to gain ideas on how developing AI in CS projects can further their own field.

The keynote presentation on Citizen Science and universities by Muki Haklay (University College London) for the EUA and OpenAIRE workshop 'University approaches to Citizen Science in the transition to Open Science Institutional opportunities and challenges for creating an open and inclusive environment for Research'. For more information, see: https://www.openaire.eu/university-approaches-to-citizen-science

This document provides supplementary material to the Characteristics of Citizen Science

This deliverable is based on Task 5.2, and includes a detailed typology of training material that is available to different stakeholders and user groups in the field of citizen science, identifying needs, priorities, and gaps. It will also catalogue the existing material that is currently available in different areas of citizen science, and the main thematic organisation that will be used in the platform. It will provide instructions and protocols for building new training modules to be integrated into the platform for external stakeholders. &nbsp

This document attempts to represent a wide range of opinions in an inclusive way, to allow for different types of projects and programmes, where context-specific criteria can be set.The characteristics outlined below are based on views expressed by researchers, practitioners, public officials and the wider public. Our aim is to identify the characteristics that should be considered when setting such criteria (e.g. a funding scheme), and we call upon readers to determine which subset of these characteristics is relevant to their own specific context and aims. These characteristics build on (and refer to) the ECSA 10 principles of citizen science as a summary of best practie – and projects are expected to engage meaningfully with them. Where it is especially pertinent, we refer to them in the characteristics below. The rest of the document covers the characteristics of citizen science under five sections: (1) core concepts; (2) disciplinary aspects; (3) leadership and participation; (4) financial aspects; and (5) data and knowledge. Further explanation and background are provided in the ‘ECSA’s characteristics of citizen science: explanation notes’ document. The research article describing this work 'Contours of citizen science: a vignette study' can be found in the Royal Society Open Science journal athttps://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202108.

This explanation document provides an interpretation of and explanation for the characteristics document, which was kept short to make it useful to different stakeholders. In this document, the characteristics document is represented, with the original text in blue and an explanation in black. The research article describing this work 'Contours of citizen science: a vignette study' can be found in the Royal Society Open Science journal athttps://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202108. &nbsp

Policy and science show great interest in citizen science as a means to public participation in research. To recognize how citizen science is perceived to foster joint working at the science-society-policy interface, a mutual understanding of the term “citizen science” is required. Here, we assess the conceptualisation and strategic use of the term “citizen science” in policy through a qualitative content analysis of 43 international policy documents edited by governments and authorities. Our results show that most documents embrace the diversity of the research approach and emphasize the many benefits that citizen science may provide for science, society, and policy. These include boosting spatio-temporal data collection through volunteers, tapping into distributed knowledge domains, increasing public interest and engagement in research, and enhancing societal relevance of the respective research. In addition, policy documents attribute educational benefits to citizen science by fostering scientific literacy, individual learning, and skill development, as well as by facilitating environmental stewardship. Through active participation, enhanced ownership of research results may improve policy decision-making processes and possibly democratise research as well as public policy processes, although the latter is mentioned only in a few European Union (EU) documents. Challenges of citizen science mentioned in the analysed policy documents relate mainly to data quality and management, to organisational and governance issues, and to difficulties of the uptake of citizen science results into actual policy implementation due to a lack of citizen science alignment with current policy structures and agendas. Interestingly, documents largely fail to address the benefits and challenges of citizen science as a tool for policy development, i.e., citizen science is mainly perceived as only a science tool. Overall, policy documents seem to be influenced strongly by the citizen science discourse in the science sector, which indicates a joint advocacy for citizen science.

The geographic data and knowledge collection and dissemination via authoritative professionals only – characterized as the top- down scheme – has been shifting in the past few years to the bottom-up scheme, in which citizens and laymen generate data they later use as information in various applications and services. This is a new era in the history of human mapping efforts, mainly in terms of data collection, but also for knowledge production. This neogeography revolution is fundamentally transforming how geographic data are acquired, maintained, analyzed, visualized, and consequently – used. With today’s technology, availability, access and ease of use there is a potential of a geographer within everybody. In view of these changes in the mapping and land surveying domain over the past few years, Commission 3 has undertaken the mission to prepare this publication within the framework of FIG, aiming to emphasize the accessibility, the potential, and the use of crowdsourcing and VGI as abasic tool for land surveyors and mappers professionals. During the 2011–2014 and 2015–2018 periods, FIG Commission 3 has addressed this phenomenon of shifting from the top-down mapping scheme to the bottom-up one. Its particular focus has been on SIM Infrastructure, Technical Aspect of SIM, and on Crowdsourcing and VGI. In this effort, FIG Commission 3 has established valuable collaborations in an effort to adopt a multi-sector approach, and bring together people with relevant expertise, such as academics, experts from the public sector as well as from the private sector, to share experience and knowledge on crowdsourcing and VGI. FIG Commission 3 cooperates closely with UN-agencies(UN ECE WPLA, and UN-HABITAT and GLTN), UNESCO, the World Bank, ISPRS and other sister associations. This publication integrates the output of research studies done by Commission 3 working groups and resolutions from the past annual workshops(Paris 2011, Athens 2012, Skopje 2013, Bologna 2014, Malta 2015, Iasi 2016, Lisbon 2017 and Napoli 2018).

Data collection applications on smartphone devices support indigenous communities in developing countries to record and preserve traditional ecological knowledge, collaboratively collect data around issues that are important to them and use these tools to subsequently identify locally-acceptable solutions with global impacts. Development of these interfaces needs to consider users’ familiarity with technology as well as their education and literacy levels. This study builds on existing HCI4D research, which is also of interest to the CSCW community, in order to develop and evaluate, for their usability and user preferences, four user interfaces with low-literate people in the UK. Our findings suggest that linear navigation structures and a tangible interface are almost equally usable and preferred when they require minimum interaction with the device. Our preliminary analysis provides a deeper insight into the design issues to inform development of smartphone-based interfaces using various interaction types and we report on our methodological challenges from carrying out HCI research with low-literate people in the UK. The findings of this paper are used to inform the experimental design of additional work that we carry out with low-literate users in Namibia.

A conservação da biodiversidade é uma questão que tem preocupado o mundo todo. Nas últimas décadas, centenas de áreas protegidas foram criadas para assegurar a preservação da biodiversidade no planeta. Um grande número de áreas protegidas é habitado por comunidades que dependem do uso de seus recursos naturais não apenas para a sua sobrevivência, mas também para a sua reprodução social e cultural. Em muitos casos, as populações locais têm sido diretamente responsáveis pela gestão sustentável desses complexos ecossistemas por séculos. Iniciativas de Ciência Cidadã – entendida como a participação de amadores, voluntários e entusiastas em projetos científicos – têm envolvido o público na produção científica e em projetos de monitoramento da biodiversidade, mas têm limitado essa participação à coleta de dados, e têm normalmente ocorrido em locais afluentes, excluindo as populações não alfabetizadas ou letradas e que vivem em áreas remotas. Povos e comunidades tradicionais conhecem os aspectos ambientais das áreas por eles habitadas, o que pode ser benéfico para a gestão e o monitoramento bem-sucedidos da biodiversidade. Portanto, ao se tratar do monitoramento e da proteção da biodiversidade em áreas habitadas por populações humanas, o seu envolvimento é central e pode conduzir a um cenário onde todas as partes envolvidas se beneficiam. Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) é um grupo de pesquisa interdisciplinar criado em 2011, na University College London, com a finalidade de avançar o atual conjunto de práticas da Ciência Cidadã. A ideia é permitir que qualquer comunidade, em qualquer lugar do mundo – desde grupos marginalizados que vivem nas periferias de áreas urbanas até grupos de caçadores e coletores da floresta amazônica –, comece um projeto de Ciência Cidadã para lidar com suas próprias questões. Este artigo apresenta os diversos aspectos que tornam a Ciência Cidadã “extrema” no trabalho do grupo ExCiteS, por meio da exposição de suas teorias, métodos e ferramentas, e dos estudos de caso atuais que envolvem comunidades tradicionais ao redor do mundo. Por fim, ressalta-se a maior preocupação do grupo, que é tornar a participação verdadeiramente efetiva, e sugere-se como iniciativas de monitoramento da biodiversidade podem ser realizadas de maneira colaborativa, trazendo benefícios a todos os atores envolvidos.

This contribution starts from the assumption that volunteered geographic information is a technological, cultural and scientific innovation. It therefore offers first some general background on the context that has fuelled the development of VGI and the lively scientific debates that have accompanied its success. The paper then focuses on the nature of this data by describing the main elements of VGI: the geographical reference (coordinates, geotag, etc.), the contents (texts, images, etc.) and the producers’ profiles. The opportunities and the criticalities offered by this data are described with examples drawn from recent literature and applications to highlight both the research challenges and the current state of the subject. The chapter aims to provide a guide to and a reference picture of this rapidly evolving subject.

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the 'biomedical model' which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus on 'downstream' interventions that rely on individual behaviour change, frequently increasing inequalities. Preventive strategies often focus on isolated leverage points and are scattered across different settings. This paper describes a major new prevention research programme that aims to create City Collaboratory testbeds to support the identification, implementation and evaluation of upstream interventions within a whole system city setting. Prevention of physical and mental ill-health will come from the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions. Rather than scatter these interventions across many settings and evaluate single outcomes, we will test their collective impact across multiple outcomes with the goal of achieving a tipping point for better health. Our focus is on early life (ActEarly) in recognition of childhood and adolescence being such critical periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing.

When faced with an environmental problem, locals are often among the first to act. Citizen science is increasingly one of the forms of participation in which people take action to help solve environmental problems that concern them. This implies, for example, using methods and instruments with scientific validity to collect and analyse data and evidence to understand the problem and its causes. Can the contribution of environmental data by citizens be articulated as a right? In this article, we explore these forms of productive engagement with a local matter of concern, focussing on their potential to challenge traditional allocations of responsibilities. Taking mostly the perspective of the European legal context, we identify an existing gap between the right to obtain environmental information, granted at present by the Aarhus Convention, and “a right to contribute information” and have that information considered by appointed institutions. We also explore what would be required to effectively practise this right in terms of legal and governance processes, capacities, and infrastructures, and we propose a flexible framework to implement it. Situated at the intersection of legal and governance studies, this article builds on existing literature on environmental citizen science, and on its interplay with law and governance. Our methodological approach combines literature review with legal analysis of the relevant conventions and national rules. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our analysis, and on the benefits of this legal innovation, potentially fostering data altruism and an active citizenship, and shielding ordinary people against possible legal risks.

The following Ph.D. thesis describes a research project, which aimed to explore the potential of environmental citizen science to contribute to more adaptive surface water governance in Luxembourg and beyond. Citizen science projects are research projects, which are marked by the active engagement of members of the public. Adaptive governance refers to a type of governance, which is based on the engagement of diverse types of knowledge, perspectives, and stakeholders, and on building adaptive capacity in the face of unforeseen change and coordination across levels and scales. The research contributes to the conceptual development of citizen science in the context of adaptive governance and provides an example of a co-design process with a focus on building a citizen science tool for the exploration of social-ecological systems. In addition, the thesis contributes to practical development by identifying a set of opportunities for change of current data collection and meaning-making towards more adaptive surface water governance in Luxembourg and by making first experiences with surface water citizen science in Luxembourg, while engaging multiple place-based, regional, and national partners. Towards the above-mentioned goal, the research project, first, examined the current data collection programmes and meaning-making approaches for the governance of surface water bodies in Luxembourg. Prevailing practices are discussed based on key criteria for adaptive governance based on relevant academic literature. The research project, then, examined different approaches to environmental citizen science as alternative and complementary data collection programmes and meaning-making approaches in view of their potential to contribute to more adaptive surface water governance.The research project set out to do so by taking a transdisciplinary sustainability science research approach. The methodology encompassed (1) semi-structured qualitative interviews with specialists in the water domain and documentary review to gain insights into the current data collection programmes and meaning-making approaches in Luxembourg, (2) the trialling of two contributory surface water citizen science projects based on the Freshwater Watch citizen science tool by Earthwatch, an approach, in which volunteers are called upon to engage in data collection designed by scientists, and (3) the co-creation of surface water citizen science projects with interested groups based in Luxembourg centred around co-design workshops, in which the co-design partners were invited to explore changes and challenges and to develop sets of parameters for investigating the state of surface water bodies based on their research interests. In line with other studies, the findings show that citizen science can, indeed, constitute new sources of data on surface water bodies and, thus, increase data availability. Citizen science can lead to datasets on multiple temporal and spatial levels, and may increase overall transparency (of, for example, data on water quality). It can also contribute to more transparency in the meaning of data and increase the capacity for individual meaning-making. The findings show, in particular, that citizen science can increase the diversity of approaches to data collection and meaning-making, as projects constitute channels for the engagement of different knowledge types and can utilise new funding sources with alternative funding criteria. In addition, the case studies have shown that citizen science is particularly useful for complementing current official data collection, in particular, with respect to data from smaller water bodies, and for linking ecological data with social and technological data for a faster detection of changes in the system and a better grasp of the evolution of drivers of change. Interestingly, the study suggests that contributory citizen science may be better suited for the initial engagement of those, who are not specialised or professionally engaged in the water domain. Specialists and professionals, in turn, showed a bigger interest in engaging in co-design.

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the ‘biomedical model’ which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus on ‘downstream’ interventions that rely on individual behaviour change, frequently increasing inequalities. Preventive strategies often focus on isolated leverage points and are scattered across different settings. This paper describes a major new prevention research programme that aims to create City Collaboratory testbeds to support the identification, implementation and evaluation of upstream interventions within a whole system city setting. Prevention of physical and mental ill-health will come from the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions. Rather than scatter these interventions across many settings and evaluate single outcomes, we will test their collective impact across multiple outcomes with the goal of achieving a tipping point for better health. Our focus is on early life (ActEarly) in recognition of childhood and adolescence being such critical periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing.

In 2014, Wiley and the Zoological Society of London launched Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, an open-access journal that aims to support communication and collaboration among experts in remote sensing, ecology and conservation science. Remote sensing was from the start understood as the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon through a device that is not in physical contact with the object, thus including camera traps, field spectrometry, terrestrial and aquatic acoustic sensors, aerial and satellite monitoring as well as ship-borne automatic identification systems. The primary goals of this new journal were, and still are, to maximize the understanding and uptake of remote sensing-based techniques and products by the ecological and conservation communities, prioritizing findings that advance the scientific basis of, and applied outcomes from, ecology and conservation science; and to identify ecological challenges that might direct development of future remote sensors and data products. In October 2015, the first issue of the journal was published, with four other issues produced in 2016 and four to be published in 2017. As Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation is about to complete its second full year of publication and is working towards a first impact factor score in early 2019, the time has come to reflect on how the journal has done to date, what impact it has had, which niches it has successfully filled and where the journal is yet to meet its full potential. By sharing our successes and experiences so far with our contributors and readers, we hope to demonstrate how Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation has swiftly gained significant visibility and status among scientists and practitioners interested in natural resource management. Fil: Pettorelli, Nathalie. The Zoological Society Of London; Reino Unido Fil: Nagendra, Harini. Azim Premji University; India Fil: Rocchini, Duccio. Università Degli Studi Di Trento; Italia Fil: Rowcliffe, Marcus. The Zoological Society Of London; Reino Unido Fil: Williams, Rob. Oceans Initiative; Estados Unidos Fil: Ahumada, Jorge. Conservation International; Estados Unidos Fil: de Angelo, Carlos Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú | Universidad Nacional de Misiones. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú; Argentina Fil: Atzberger, Clement. Universitat Fur Bodenkultur Wien; Austria Fil: Boyd, Doreen. Science and Technology Facilities Council of Nottingham. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory; Reino Unido. University of Nottingham; Estados Unidos Fil: Buchanan, Graeme. Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds; Reino Unido Fil: Chauvenet, Alienor. University of Queensland; Australia Fil: Disney, Mathias. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino Unido Fil: Duncan, Clare. Deakin University; Australia Fil: Fatoyinbo, Temilola. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Estados Unidos Fil: Fernandez, Nestor. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Estación Biológica de Doñana; España Fil: Haklay, Muki. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino Unido Fil: He, Kate. Murray State University Murray; Estados Unidos Fil: Horning, Ned. American Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos Fil: Kelly, Natalie. Australian Antarctic Division; Australia Fil: de Klerk, Helen. Stellenbosch University; Sudáfrica Fil: Liu, Xuehua. Tsinghua University; China Fil: Merchant, Nathan. Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science; Reino Unido Fil: Paruelo, José. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: Roy, Helen. NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology; Reino Unido Fil: Roy, Shovonlal. University of Reading; Reino Unido Fil: Ryan, Sadie. University of Florida; Estados Unidos Fil: Sollmann, Rahel. University of California at Davis; Estados Unidos Fil: Swenson, Jennifer. University of Duke; Estados Unidos Fil: Wegmann, Martin. Universität Würzburg; Alemania

Since 2012, three organizations advancing the work of citizen science practitioners have arisen in different regions: The primarily US-based but globally open Citizen Science Association (CSA), the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), and the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA). These associations are moving rapidly to establish themselves and to develop inter-association collaborations. We consider the factors driving this emergence and the significance of this trend for citizen science as a field of practice, as an area of scholarship, and for the culture of scientific research itself. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the past few years, crowdsourced geographic information (also called volunteered geographic information) has emerged as a promising information source for improving urban resilience by managing risks and coping with the consequences of disasters triggered by natural hazards. This chapter presents a typology of sources and usages of crowdsourced geographic information for disaster management, as well as summarises recent research results and present lessons learned for future research and practice in this field.