Citizen Science Ethics

Getting to grips with wildlife research by citizen scientists: What role for regulation?

“…a booklet on live trapping small mammals published by the Mammal Society: Gurnell & Flowerdew, 2006). Despite this, we think it is nonetheless advisable to encourage and promote conversations about ethics and regulation in citizen science, as a way of undertaking a ‘healthy assessment of the field’ (Rasmussen & Cooper, 2019, p. 1). We have proposed three steps that could be taken to progress these conversations, both in the UK and internationally (Table 2).…”

“…Our goal in this perspectives piece is to stimulate conversations about the regulation and ethics of wildlife‐focussed citizen science, using the UK context as a detailed case study. As Rasmussen and Cooper (2019) pointed out in their introduction to a special issue of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice devoted to ethics, there is no obvious drive from citizen scientists or regulators to talk about ethics in citizen science (at least not in the USA where these co‐authors reside). Despite this, they noted that focussing on ethics not only shows a willingness to undertake a ‘healthy assessment of the field’, but is also sensible given that we should expect problems to arise at some point, as they would in any field.…”

Ethical Challenges and Dynamic Informed Consent

“…The new roles, boundaries, and relationships between researchers and research participants that citizen science entails currently lack sufficient ethical and regulatory coverage (Rasmussen and Cooper 2019a;Fiske et al 2018;Rothstein et al 2015). While the protection of human subjects in research has traditionally been guided by informed consent or Institutional Review Board (IRB) mechanisms, the widely distributed nature of citizen science challenges a one-size-fits-all set of ethical requirements for the broad variety of practices and collaborative formats that it embraces (Fiske et al 2018).…”

“…We explain the issues around unethical citizen science and why a high standard of ethical practice in citizen science is crucial to its success. As Rasmussen and Cooper (2019a) suggest, it is not sufficient to simply react to ethical issues; what is needed is to proactively and prospectively address problems. Furthermore, many citizen science projects exist outside of institutions where regulations apply, and there is no central authority or governing body that oversees the field of citizen science.…”

Citizen Science for Quantifying and Reducing Food Loss and Food Waste

“…There are also debates about who benefits from citizen science, with scientist-led, data-driven approaches in particular still being dominant (Geoghegan et al, 2016) and seen by some as extractive and not offering the mutual benefits for citizens and democratization of science that the approach has promised (Sauermann et al, 2020). Finally, ethical issues, for example around the payment of participants, and data privacy and access (Evans, 2020) have just begun to be discussed and need further exploration (Rasmussen and Cooper, 2019). Citizen science is not appropriate in all contexts and consideration needs to be given as to whether other methodological approaches (for example, surveys) would achieve the same goals.…”