Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The Galaxy Zoo project crediting its top classifiers as authors on a discovery paper
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A passive user of a fitness-tracking app whose data is analysed is a data subject, not a citizen-scientist contributor
Editorial commentary
Citizen scientist contribution is substantive research work performed by members of the public volunteering in data collection, classification, observation, or analysis — ranging from a single data point submitted to a platform like Zooniverse, to sustained, expert-level engagement from a project’s most active volunteers. It is distinct from being a study subject: a citizen scientist actively does research work, rather than being observed or measured by it.
How it differs from related terms: Unlike a patient partner, whose contribution is usually about shaping research design and interpretation from lived experience, a citizen scientist’s contribution is typically the research labour itself — observing, classifying, or collecting. Both differ from Indigenous knowledge holder contribution, which involves community-governed traditional or ecological knowledge rather than crowdsourced task participation.
Credit conventions scale with engagement: collective acknowledgement of “the project’s volunteer contributors” for one-off participants, individually named credit for top contributors, and co-authorship for volunteers whose sustained work meets authorship criteria — as with citizen-science projects that have listed their most active classifiers as named authors on discovery papers.
References
- European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) Ten Principles of Citizen Science (2015)
- Bonney et al., “Next Steps for Citizen Science,” Science (2014)
Also known as
Crowd science contribution · Volunteer researcher contribution
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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