Participant crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., MTurk, Prolific) offer numerous advantages to addiction science, permitting access to hard-to-reach populations and enhancing the feasibility of complex experimental, longitudinal, and intervention studies. Yet these are met with equal concerns about participant nonnaivety, motivation, and careless responding, which if not considered can greatly compromise data quality. In this article, we discuss an alternative crowdsourcing avenue that overcomes these issues whilst presenting its own unique advantages-crowdsourcing researchers through big team science. First, we review several contemporary efforts within psychology (e.g., ManyLabs, Psychological Science Accelerator) and the benefits these would yield if they were more widely implemented in addiction science. We then outline our own consortium-based approach to empirical dissertations: a grassroots initiative that trains students in reproducible big team addiction science. In doing so, we discuss potential challenges and their remedies, as well as providing resources to help addiction researchers develop these initiatives. Through researcher crowdsourcing, together we can answer fundamental scientific questions about substance use and addiction, build a literature that is representative of a diverse population of researchers and participants, and ultimately achieve our goal of promoting better global health.
Public Health SignificanceThis special issue on "crowdsourcing methods in addiction science" focuses on best practices and emerging research that uses online participant recruitment platforms. An alternative method is that of crowdsourcing researchers through big team science. In this article, we: (a) review contemporary researcher crowdsourcing efforts and the benefits these would bring to addiction science; (b) outline our approach to teaching students in reproducible big team addiction science; and (c) evaluate challenges and their remedies, as well as providing resources, to help others develop these initiatives.