Beyond Data and Quality - Unleashing the Value of Citizen Contributions

Abstract

Citizen Science projects generate outcomes that have the potential to be highly valuable both for science and society. Those contributions are not restricted to data, but can be other kinds of results, e.g. best practices, new insights or research questions. Letting Citizen Science have a true impact requires us to unleash the value of citizen contributions. This touches a wide range of points and goes beyond mere data quality considerations. Challenges include, but are not restricted to - How cannot just data, but other outcomes of Citizen Science projects be captured and made accessible to others? - How to make sure that citizen contributions are findable, accessible and interpretable by others and how to enable interoperability with other data and knowledge sources (i.e. adhere to the FAIR-Principles)? - How to assess and improve the quality and reliability of Citizen Science outcomes and increase their credibility? - How to make sure that data collected by citizen scientists are useful and relevant for addressing scientific questions? - How to enable citizen scientists to gain and apply insights from project outcomes? This talk is meant as an impulse for further discussion and scholarly exchange on these topics to foster a systematic approach to address these challenges.