Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy

TLDR

Citizen science mobilizes the public to collect extensive data across diverse habitats and time periods, yielding large datasets on species occurrence and distribution while also aiming to educate participants about organisms and scientific inquiry, though developing such projects demands substantial effort. This article presents a model developed over two decades at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for building and operating citizen science projects, with the goal of informing biodiversity monitoring, biological research, and science education and offering insight into the cultural aspects of citizen science. The model outlines the processes and structures for designing, launching, and sustaining citizen science initiatives, detailing how public data collection is organized, managed, and integrated into scientific workflows.

Abstract

Citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time. Citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data about species occurrence and distribution around the world. Most citizen science projects also strive to help participants learn about the organisms they are observing and to experience the process by which scientific investigations are conducted. Developing and implementing public data-collection projects that yield both scientific and educational outcomes requires significant effort. This article describes the model for building and operating citizen science projects that has evolved at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology over the past two decades. We hope that our model will inform the fields of biodiversity monitoring, biological research, and science education while providing a window into the cultur...