Guidelines for Research Ethics and Research Integrity in Citizen Science

Abstract

Students and researchers might have diverse ideas about and motivations for citizen science (CS) projects. To prevent uncertainty, we address ethical concerns emerging in CS projects and in CS in general, specifically, the transferability of the ethical skills and knowledge gained within academia (e.g. through studying and research conduct). We dedicate these Guidelines for Research Ethics and Research Integrity in Citizen Science primarily to Masters and Doctoral students and their supervisors, to facilitate CS-related research activities (i.e. mainstream CS) in line with the values of academic integrity. Using a pool of 85 papers, we identified nine topics covering 22 customised guidelines and supplemented them with further readings to build more in-depth knowledge.