Finalizing a Definition of "Citizen Science" and "Citizen Scientists"

Photo Courtesy: Booksworm

Over the last two weeks I've been thinking a lot more about our question of "What is a Citizen Scientist?"  On the one hand the various definitions we've already talked about seem even stronger than they did on first glance; incorporating many of the thoughts I presumed would be missing.  But yet there are still some holes we need to fill.  So let's look more closely at some of the proposed definitions.

There are two definitions that come closest, so let's examine each one in turn.  The first is from Silvertown:

"A citizen scientist is a volunteer who collects and/or processes data as part of a scientific enquiry."

 

The main issue I have with this entry is the use of the term "volunteer".  Certainly there is a hobby or avocational aspect of citizen science, but making money from scientific contributions should not be ruled out.  For starters, many of the Challenge-type projects (such as the Innocentive project or the Ansari X Prizes) rely on profit motives to encourage participation and to inspire innovation.  Even further, they recognize that key insights to problems may come from outside the established scientific community (or at least from outside the targeted discipline).  There are also projects that rely on profit motives for the collection of data...I term these "Bounty" projects.  These would also be excluded from a volunteer-based definition.

I haven't talked much about Bounty projects on this site since there haven't been many good examples of them developed so far.  But I expect to see them in the future and think this is an exciting area for future development in the field.  Not only will it help science generally but it will also help overcome the monetization problem needed to make citizen science increasingly mainstream and incorporate citizen scientists more firmly in the corporate science environment.  Similar to Challenge projects they use profit as a motive, but don't use it to spur innovation.  Instead rewards are used to incentivize the collection of data that may not be a goal in and of itself, but which is needed for others to fulfill the scientific goal.  Examples are data collection projects that base raffle-style drawings based on the amount of data each user collects, or which offers prizes for hitting certain levels of participation.  I'll have much more on this in future posts (after doing some more research) as it's an exciting new area for potential growth.

The second definition is more of a description, and comes from the Po Ve Sham blog of Muki Haklay (who is apparently writing a book chapter on citizen science in GIS - Geographic Information Sciences):

"[Citizen Science is defined as]...scientific activities in which non-professional scientists volunteer to participate in data collection, analysis and dissemination of a scientific project..."

 

What I like about this one is that it includes the a brief, but concise and encompassing range of activities citizen scientists perform.  It even adds dissemination, which I had not initially included but which may be appropriate.  In my understanding dissemination involves teaching others about science and the scientific process, and activity performed by our most illustrious professional scientists as well.  But the distinction between "professional" and "non-professional" scientists in this description does cause some problems for me.  It neglects the many scientists who are active in one field "professionally" but whose love of scientific inquiry in general leads them to become involved in citizen science projects outside their current discipline.  Anecdotally I'd say this describes the majority of currently active citizen scientists since these people are most likely to have both the general tools and personality to be interested in this research.  So we have to make sure they are included too.

Another problem with this description is it's circularity that defines citizen scientists as performing scientific activities in a scientific project.  Instead I'd prefer a definition that describes the nature of science without using that term, such as dictionary definitions involving systematic explorations/discoveries of natural phenomena.  Or we could just use synonymous terms such as "Investigator" or "Researcher". It's admittedly a minor point, and possibly a bit pedantic, but we should keep it in mind.

Looking at everything said over the last few blog posts (here, here and here),  any definition needs to capture professional scientists working outside their discipline.  And it can't be relegated to just certain disciplines currently popular in citizen science such as ecology or astronomy.  So I'm offering the following alternatives for people to comment on.

Citizen Scientist: Researcher who participates in the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities on an avocational basis.

Citizen Science:  The systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis.

So what do you think?  Does this go to far?  Is there anything missing?  Should dissemination be included?  Is it too wordy or even just not very poetic?  Leave me your comments below and we can come up with the most definitive (no pun intended) version we can.




UPDATE: Added "systematic" to each definition to emphasize that citizen science does not occur in a vacuum, but involves the whole scientific community.

Update 2: Added the qualifier "primarily avocational" to avoid excluding vocational researchers who participate in citizen science as an addition to their work.