Innovation in Citizen Science – Perspectives on Science-Policy Advances

How Does Policy Conceptualise Citizen Science? A Qualitative Content Analysis of International Policy Documents

“…In the scientific realm, CS is mostly discussed in a critical but positive manner with publications advocating for the development of CS (e.g., Bonn et al 2016;Serrano Sanz et al 2014), or providing insights into the evolving field of CS with different foci (e.g., Cavalier andKennedy 2016, Ceccaroni andPiera 2017;Hecker et al 2018a). Critical discussions most often do not question the CS approach per se but point to challenges that need to be addressed, such as data quality (e.g., Lukyanenko et al 2016;Kosmala et al 2016), the increase of public understanding of science or scientific literacy (e.g., Bonney et al 2015;Crall et al 2013), or learning potential (e.g., Bela et al 2016;National Academies 2018;Feldman et al 2018).…”

“…The CS community actively advocates for the development of CS through tailored communication towards policymakers and their networks in the form of policy briefs, for example, the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) advocated for the inclusion of CS as part of EU Policy Delivery (ECSA 2016) and endorsed the German Green Paper on Citizen Science (ECSA 2015), and the European project Doing It together Science (DITOS) advocated for synergies between CS and Open Science (DITOS 2017). The development of CS also is supported by global associations, national organisations, and capacity programmes (Göbel et al 2017;Richter et al 2018), and is promoted by conferences of at least three CS associations (i.e., the US Citizen Science Association, the European Citizen Science Association, and the Australian Citizen Science Association) as hubs for the development of the field (e.g., Hecker et al 2018a). At the same time, critical voices that question CS in its current conceptualization have emerged .…”

“…Within epidemiology, Eitzel et al (2017) investigated CS terminologies and found that the choice of terminology (e.g., what to call participants in a CS project) influences the inclusion or exclusion of knowledge and the (self-) perception of participants, and therefore, the whole knowledge production process. Some in the CS community have called for a common usage of the term CS to show its impacts on a broad scale, create synergies, and allow for networking (Hecker et al 2018a), while acknowledging that there is not and cannot be one CS definition .…”

Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) Management in the Dungeness Valley, Washington, United States: The Power of Citizen Scientists to Leverage Policy Change

“…The steering committee recommended to the County Commissioners the development of a new integrated weed management plan (IWMP) that would enable the County to more effectively and efficiently meet its legal obligations to control noxious weeds. The Master Gardeners were involved in creating the evidence base for a needed policy change, an effective way for citizen science to be utilized to directly inform policy development (Hecker et. al, 2018).…”

Beach environmental DNA fills gaps in photographic biomonitoring to track spatiotemporal community turnover across 82 phyla

“…iNaturalist and other volunteer-collected species occurrence records (such as eBird) help populate the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; Robertson et al, 2014), which also includes collection and observation data curated by thousands of institutions (n=1332 ‘publishers’ as of January 11, 2019). Citizen and community scientists are eager to be data contributors and deepen their involvement in knowledge assessment and possible conservation actions, (Hecker et al, 2018). Everyone is impacted by the challenges of biodiversity loss.…”