{"id":2716,"date":"2025-07-31T10:49:53","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T07:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uef.fi\/bors\/?page_id=2716"},"modified":"2025-10-10T07:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:56:22","slug":"what-is-citizen-science","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uef.fi\/bors\/module-2-citizen-science\/what-is-citizen-science\/","title":{"rendered":"What is citizen science?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Luis J Albizu, StockSnap.io.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Citizen science<\/strong>, 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<\/strong> itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key features of citizen science:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Citizen scientists are involved in at least one stage of the research.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Citizen scientists are not the subjects of the research but the authors of it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Research must usually be led by a trained researcher.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    According to the European Citizen Science Association<\/strong><\/a> (ESCA), citizen science is an \u2018umbrella\u2019 term that describes a variety of ways in which the public participates in science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Who?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Citizen science projects can involve a range of participants<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Citizens can also participate in monitoring, processing, analysing, describing, and interpreting the collected data. All of this helps make large datasets more suitable for research use, facilitate information compilation, and support the development of applications and tools. For example, in the National Archives\u2019 project (2020\u20132025) Finns in Russia 1917\u20131964<\/a>, Russian-speaking participants are involved in building a database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Some common ways and examples in which citizens can participate in scientific research:<\/h3>\n\n\n\t
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