What is citizen science?
What?
Citizen science, sometimes also mentioned as participatory science, community science, crowd-sourced science or volunteer monitoring, refers to citizens actively and openly participating in the research process itself.
Key features of citizen science:
- Citizen scientists are involved at least at one stage of the research.
- Citizen scientists are not the subjects of the research but the authors of it.
- Research must usually be led by a trained researcher.
According to the European Citizen Science Association (ESCA), citizen science is an ‘umbrella’ term that describes a variety of ways in which the public participates in science.
Who?
Citizen science projects can involve a range of participants, including civil society, public authorities, academia and industry, working together to contribute to scientific research and progress. Citizens from a diverse demographic and geographical range are at the core of citizen science and substantially contribute to the research.
How?
One familiar form of participation is data collection, for example through various types of observations. Research can benefit from significantly larger amounts or more diverse data when citizens from different regions and backgrounds are involved in the collection process. For instance, in linguistics, speech samples can be gathered, or in environmental research, species or climate observations can be collected.
Citizens can also participate in monitoring, processing, analyzing, describing, and interpreting the collected data. All of this helps make large datasets more suitable for research use, facilitate information compilation, or support the development of applications and tools. For example, in the National Archives’ project (2020–2025) Finns in Russia 1917–1964, Russian-speaking participants are involved in building a database.
Sometimes citizen scientists contribute to research by helping formulate research questions or by participating in the design of the research project and its protocol. For example, in the project Linguistic Awareness and Change in Everyday Finnish, language users act as co-researchers who have been involved in planning data collection and reflecting on the research questions, for instance through the formulation of themes.
Some common ways and examples in which citizens can participate in scientific research:
Citizen science across disciplines
Citizen science can take place in a diverse array of fields, including ecology, astronomy, biology, medicine, computer science, history, sociology – and many more. Historically, citizen science has been mostly applied within the field of natural sciences, but the scope and application of citizen science is constantly expanding. Citizen science can happen at a range of different scales – from local projects to continental and global scales, and from short projects to those that occur over decades.
Currently, citizen science is becoming increasingly important in different fields of science. More and more scientists rely on data collected by citizen science projects like iNaturalist and eBird. However, the extent of citizen scientist involvement varies across scientific disciplines.
Citizen science in natural sciences has a long history, going back at least to the 1600s when amateurs helped record observations about nature. Actually, even older example of citizen science is the observation of cherry blossom flowering in Kyoto, Japan. This practice dates back to the year 801 AD, when merchants, politicians, monks, and others recorded the start of the cherry blossom season in their diaries. These long-term observations have provided valuable insights into climate and ecological patterns and changes over the centuries. They have helped build the idea of collecting data together, such as observing animals, plants, and weather patterns.
While citizen science is commonly associated with natural sciences, its application in the humanities has a rich history and has significantly evolved over time. Community members have long contributed e.g. to local history preservation and the documentation of cultural practices. Participants can, for example, assist in transcribing historical texts, classifying objects, or collecting local knowledge. Since the late 1900s, digital tools, like mobile apps and platforms like Zooniverse have notably facilitated global collaboration among citizen scientists.
In social sciences, citizen science – or ‘citizen social science’ – explores societal phenomena and contributes to solving social problems. Participants may collect data on local communities, take part in surveys, or analyze social networks. This approach can help to better understand social structures and promote social innovation.
Citizen science can also be integrated into interdisciplinary research projects. For example, the KARKKI project (Citizen Science on Everyday Environments), which integrates themes such as nutrition, environmental health, and psychosocial well-being, is a research initiative that explores food environments and nearby waters through citizen science. The aim is to understand how everyday environments – such as food-related choices and the condition of local water bodies – affect people’s well-being and sustainable lifestyles. Citizens participate, for example, by observing and taking photographs. The project also includes exhibitions and events that bring research closer to everyday life. Also, archaeological projects (e.g., Archaeological Spessart Project, website in German) often combine various methods and disciplines, and citizens can also be involved in them. Community archaeology initiatives offer local residents a meaningful way to explore their surrounding area and its history.