Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Open Source Computing and Citizen Science Innovation - Where They Start and End

The last few weeks I've been fleshing out thoughts on citizen science business models in preparation for next year's Citizen Science Conference in San Jose.  There is so much to sift through and people to talk with that I wanted to hit the ground running.  Of course there won't be nearly enough time to discuss everything during a two-day conference, but I hope this will start a discussion there, and on this blog, for a long time afterwards.

One interesting book I came across was "Making Open Innovation Work" by Stefan Lindegard, which offers great insights on companies harnessing the innovation of external researchers.  Many of these lessons can be applies to our discussion, but that's not why I'm writing.  Instead it forces me to ask a question that has bothered me a for a while but I've never successfully answered.

What is the dividing line between citizen science and open-source computing?  Is there one?

The reason I ask is the book discusses the work of TopCoder.com, a web site that connects open-source computer programmers with companies looking to pay for code.  Think of this as a for-profit version of the site Github.com.  In many ways what they do is scientific and many of the same citizen scientists in our field are the same as people drawn to open-source computing.  But the two fields have never really connected and we don't often hear them talked about in the same context.  Is this just a remnant of people not understanding the fields of data science/computer science, or is there something deeper? I have ideas on some of the differences but I want to hear yours.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.  I'll keep answering this question online before the conference and keep this conversation going.  But I think it's an interesting discussion regardless of a future presentation.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Citizen Science Business Models - An Idea Worth Exploring

Thank you all for your feedback.  With your advice I put together, and submitted, a proposal for the upcoming Citizen Science 2015 conference.  It's a favorite topic of mine and one that is essential to moving our field forward "For Love and Money: Business Models that support, benefit from, and share the rewards with, the work of citizen scientists."

This is an ambitious talk for me but one I feel is important.  In many ways I can only scratch the surface in a PowerPoint presentation to a conference room of citizen science professionals.  But it will kick off a whole series of follow-up reports on this blog about the topic.  There is much good background research that can't be included without overwhelming the audience, but is perfect for an online environment.  There are also nuances, subtleties, and sub-categories of information that are vitally important and can't fit on a Powerpoint slide.  But mostly I want to keep the conversation going long after the conference ends.

I'm doing this in my strong belief that the citizen science community can make important discoveries and support research that provide value to profit-making companies, and they deserve to be rewarded for that service.  But that money is also needed to support citizen science research and pay for investments that will expand what citizen scientists can do.  Research costs money and it has to come from somewhere.

Conferences also cost money.  And in true citizen science fashion they are hoping to crowdfund through the company Razoo for a significant amount of support. I'm hugely appreciative of all the opportunities this conference provides so I'm happy to make a donation.  Won't you join me?  This conference is here to help you but they need your support.  Give a little or give a lot, anything will help.

See you in Palo Alto!  

Monday, September 1, 2014

Care to Team Up on Some Citizen Science Conference Sessions?

I love a good conference.  Most are filled with opportunities to learn new things and meet like-minded people.  You can become an expert in anything by yourself at home, then suddenly realize there is much more to learn.  And it's a great way to stay motivated until the NEXT conference.  Which is why I'm so excited about next year's Citizen Science Association Conference in San Jose.

But what do I plan to talk about at the meeting?  And do you want to join me?

For starters, there is an open Call for Proposals for sessions due mid-September.  As I wrote last week there are some good ideas I've been considering that would be of interest to attendees and would take advantage of my previous work.  I've since narrowed it down to these two.  If you would like to help with them or have ideas of your own to add, please let me know.  I'd love to make these as inclusive as possible with the participation of a wide variety of people.   In other words, doing it the citizen science way.
  • For Love and Money: Business models for creating a citizen science industry infrastructure that supports, and benefits from, the work of citizen scientists.
An important finding of my poster for the 2012 Citizen Science Conference was that "... the strongest positive correlation for all interactive citizen science projects is the availability of a reward."  This piqued many people's curiosity and was the source of many discussions at my poster.  While they all agreed with the sentiment none had a really good (and cost-effective) way of doing that, and they were looking for advice.  Unfortunately this is a "chicken and egg" problem where you need scale to drive benefits that bring monetary rewards, but getting to that scale required monetary incentives.  So we need to break this logjam and incrementally create a self-sustaining infrastructure that will support our efforts. 
This fits under the theme of "Tackling grand challenges and everyday problems with citizen science" by addressing the only way to ensure extensive data collection and public participation in scientific research - by introducing a profit motive.   This half hour session will include independent research on existing techniques,  analogies to other scientific fields, select experiences from current companies in the field, and impact analysis of existing projects that include profit motivators. 
The big challenge here is providing organization and self-sustaining momentum to the citizen science movement.  Currently we are reliant on people's good will and free time for their participation.  This applies across all of the various scientific fields that citizen science impacts, such as medicine, ecology, astronomy, and climate change. While this has worked for the time being we need to find ways to bring the POTENTIAL for amateur scientists to earn money from their work.  To do that, companies need to be able to profit from the work of amateur scientists. 
I see this session unfolding in the following way:
  • Demonstrating need for a profit motive beyond altruistic, educational, and other motivating factors
  • (Non-financial) Ways Profit Helps Citizen Scientists
  • Ways to Benefit Companies
  • Analysis of Current Profit Motivators (Quantitative)
  • Analysis of Current Profit Motivators (Qualitative)
    • Challenge Projects
    • "Door Prizes" based on participation, not results
    • Non-cash incentives 
    • Bounties
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Crowd-funding
  • Building the Infrastructure
    • Initial Steps
    • Middle Steps
    • Final Vision
Through this session, we will see how developing an mutually beneficial infrastructure can help all participants and will lay out a course for achieving that vision. 
The big question is how large and long this talk will be.  There is a short version I can do as a solo speaker that should engage the audience and provide a lot of new perspectives to spark discussion.  And I'm already planning to include insights from some people already trying to make this work.  But I am still looking for some people/companies with experience partnering with and profiting from citizen science efforts.  If you are one of these people and would like to join the discussion, I'd love to make this a larger panel discussion for the full conference.


  • Transparency in Government-Funded ResearchPros and Cons from a Citizen Science standpoint
This fits under the theme of "Digital Opportunities and Challenges in Citizen Science" by evaluating the impact of various "Open Science" efforts begun by Federal agencies on citizen scientists and citizen science projects (ironically, that is a different meaning than in my "OpenScientist" name).  This would be a short, 15-minute talk about the current policies of various Federal research agencies, description of the data and materials available to the public, analysis of how (and if) it is actually being used by citizen scientists in their research, and ideas for expanding both its use and utility. 
Unfortunately this is actually part of my day job and may require some ethics approvals to present.  But if there are people who want to talk about this issue (from either a citizen science or Federal agency standpoint) please let me know and it will be worth my going through clearances.
Unfortunately not all of my ideas fit into the six conference themes.  So "Citizen Science vs. Citizen Pseudo-ScienceSeparating amateur researchers from public crackpots" will need to be a future set of posts on this blog, as will "Federal Government's Role in Supporting Citizen ScienceA history and future opportunities".

A third is a prime opportunity for a much longer set of posts or even a separate web site:"Re-Examining Citizen Science Throughout HistoryHow pervasive were amateur researchers in the history of science versus "Establishment" or "Professional" researchers.  How can we apply those modern terms to yesterday's society?  Can we use historical lessons to increase public participation and respect in the field?"   It's not something I can show publicly in the next few months since time will be limited, but I encourage anyone interested in this topic to get in touch with me at OpenScientst (at) gmail.com.  I have a lot of ideas and would love to hear yours too.