Citizen science harnesses the skills of non-scientists to make significant contributions to scientific research. It utilizes human abilities like pattern recognition to achieve results that could take trained scientists decades in just months. Some key benefits of citizen science include leveraging collective intelligence, crowdsourcing research, and allowing participatory action. Examples of successful citizen science projects include malariacontrol.net and various Cornell Lab of Ornithology initiatives that involve volunteers in data collection and analysis.

1. SETTING UP A CITIZEN SCIENCE
PROJECT:
unrealized potential of
Citizen Science
in Life Science research
Practice of science by non-scientists, laypeople, “THE CROWD”
 humans have unique skills, such as pattern recognition, and perfect them quickly
 what could take a trained lab scientist DECADES, citizen scientists can collectively achieve
in MONTHS!
…and they are surprisingly good at it.
AKA
Collective intelligence
Human computation
Crowdsourced science
Participatory action
research
References
Curtis, V. (2014). Online citizen science games: Opportunities for the biological sciences. Applied &
Translational Genomics, 3(4), 90–94. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.atg.2014.07.001
EU White Paper on Citizen Science. (2003). Socientize project.
Hand, E. (2010) People Power. Nature 466: 685-687.
Michelucci, PE and Dickinson, JL. (2016) The power of crowds. Science (2016 January 1 issue)
Follett R, Strezov V (2015) An Analysis of Citizen Science Based Research: Usage and Publication
Patterns. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0143687. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143687
Egle Marija Ramanauskaite
Vilnius University (LT), Citizen Cyberlab (CERN), Human Computation Institute (USA)
Acknowledgements
Pietro Michelucci of the Human Computation Institute;
Francois Grey, Citizen Cyberlab team, and all of the Citizen Cyberlab project* collaborators at UNIGE,
CERN, UNITAR, UPD, UCL, Imperial College London and The Mobile Collective.
AND ALL THE CITIZEN SCIENTISTS WHO MAKE CITIZEN SCIENCE HAPPEN & THE FIELD GROW!!
Citizen Science projects by type (total 456). Follett and Strezov (2015).
WeCureALZ will combine existing technologies to crowdsource analysis of stalled
Alzheimer’s brain vessels. Developed by the Human Computation Institute, Cornell
University.
Hero.Coli
Hero.Coli synthetic biology game will allow citizen scientists to create new genetic
systems by combining real BioBricks of the BioBrick foundation . Developed by CRI,
Paris Descartes University.
Volunteer…
Computing
Thinking
Gaming
Sensing
*
*
*
* - requires NO PROGRAMMING KNOWDLEGE whatsoever
ALREADY SUCCESSFUL PROJECTS OUT THERE:
and many many more …
*supported by the EU-FP7 STREP project Citizen Cyberlab: Technology Enhanced Creative Learning in the field of Citizen
Cyberscience, under the contract no.317705.
malariacontrol.net
MORE TOOLS :
Citizen Science Central’s Citizen Science Toolkit Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit
www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit/toolkit https://crowdsourcing-toolkit.sites.usa.gov/