Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The Great Backyard Bird Count, where public volunteers collect standardised biodiversity observations that feed directly into published ecological research.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A museum exhibit that explains recent research findings to visitors is public engagement, not citizen science, because visitors are not contributing to the research process itself.
Editorial commentary
Citizen science is a mode of research in which members of the public participate directly in the scientific process — not merely as subjects of study, but as contributors to data collection, protocol design, or analysis — distinguishing it from outreach, which communicates finished science to the public rather than involving the public in producing it.
Modes of participation
Citizen-science projects vary widely in how much authority participants hold. “Contributory” projects have publics collect data to a protocol designed entirely by researchers (most biodiversity-recording apps work this way); “collaborative” projects involve publics in designing or refining the data-collection protocol itself; “co-created” projects have publics involved from question-framing through to analysis and dissemination, closely resembling co-production. Established platforms illustrating the contributory end of this range include Zooniverse, iNaturalist, eBird, and the Great Backyard Bird Count.
Quality, ethics and recognition standards
ECSA, the European Citizen Science Association, publishes the Ten Principles of Citizen Science, addressing data quality, participant recognition and research ethics specifically for this mode of participation — see that entry for what ECSA is and does; this entry covers citizen science as a research method, not the association itself. UNESCO’s 2021 Recommendation on Open Science explicitly identifies citizen science as a pillar of open science, formally recognising public participation in research as a legitimate mode of scientific knowledge production rather than an informal adjunct to it.
Where administrators should be careful
Labelling a project “citizen science” when public involvement is limited to passive data collection against a fixed protocol, with no route to affecting design or analysis, is technically defensible under the contributory-mode definition but should not be conflated with the collaborative or co-created modes when reporting participation depth in a grant application or impact case study — funders increasingly ask which mode a project actually used, not just whether the label applies.
References
- ECSA, Ten Principles of Citizen Science, 2015. Bonney R et al., “Citizen Science: a developing tool for expanding science knowledge”, BioScience, 2009. UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, 2021.
Also known as
Citizen science research · Community science
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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