The diversity and evolution of ecological and environmental citizen science.

ABSTRACT: Citizen science-the involvement of volunteers in data collection, analysis and interpretation-simultaneously supports research and public engagement with science, and its profile is rapidly rising. Citizen science represents a diverse range of approaches, but until now this diversity has not been quantitatively explored. We conducted a systematic internet search and discovered 509 environmental and ecological citizen science projects. We scored each project for 32 attributes based on publicly obtainable information and used multiple factor analysis to summarise this variation to assess citizen science approaches. We found that projects varied according to their methodological approach from 'mass participation' (e.g. easy participation by anyone anywhere) to 'systematic monitoring' (e.g. tr

SUBMITTER: Pocock MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5378328 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature