This year we’re going to develop and employ some DIY-environmental monitoring stations in Graz (more info to come soon), so I started gathering some info about citizen science: projects, as well as best practices and general reflections about this topic.
If you have any additional material, please post it to comments or to @chris_kittel. Thanks!
Citizen Science Can Produce Reliable Data: A short piece about procedures, problems and data quality when involving volunteers in gathering empirical data. OKFN, John Gollan.
Of Citizen Science, Ethics and IRBs: Clarifying thoughts about Citizen / DIY-Science, ethical questions and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). Contains lots of links to further reading and discussion. Scientific American, Judy Stone.
Posting the Flu. The Web and Pandemic Surveillance: This post is about practical experiences in tracking the spreading of diseases, tools and scopes of analysis, and has links regarding modeling and visualization techniques. MyScienceWork, Abby Tabor.
Citizen Science and Air Quality Monitoring in Tokyo: This blog is about a DIY-Project to monitor various air quality variables (Carbon Monoxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, temperature, humidity) in Tokyo. It was developed during a weeklong Hackathon, and is already producing data. Safecast, levi.
Public Invited to Webinar on Citizen Science: Together with CoCoRaHS (Community, Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network), the NASA invites the public to attend a free Webinar on Citizen Science with Dalia Kirschbaum (GPM application scientist and education and outreach coordinator), and Gail Skofronick-Jackson (GPM deputy project scientist). The GPM is a satellite mission for Global Precipitation Measurement. The Webinar will be on Feb. 13th, and you can register here. NASA, Ellen Gray.
In old tradition, I’ll add a linklist to this linklist, from Sciencecitizen.org. It has scientific papers about Citizen Science in various fields: Astronomy, Biology, Computer Science and Robotics.
Press Coverage of Climate Change Issues in Nigeria and Implications for Public Participation Opportunities: This paper analyzes the role of media in transporting scientific research and involving the public. It offers insight into problems and possible improvements regarding more empowering narratives and discourses, inclusion or exclusion through framing, and better collaboration opportunities through choice of information sources. Journal of Sustainable Development, Herbert Batta.
Participatory Sensing. The Tension between Social Translucence and Privacy: This paper sheds some light on the trade-offs between visibility of contribution and protecting privacy. It reviews processes and technical solutions that can help building trust and reputation systems, in order to build communities around, and maintain quality of, generating data. Academia.edu, Ioannis Krontiris & Nicolas Maisonneuve.
There are also questions about outsourcing, unpaid work and whether this is a new form of exploiting voluntariness for reducing research costs, that have to be addressed in future works.
