The Many Faces of Success in Citizen Science

Citizen science seems to be in vogue now – it even goes by different names, like ‘public participation in scientific research’, ‘co-produced knowledge’, ‘collaborative research, and ‘democratized science’. A handful of scholars have tried to classify the different types while many others expound the myriad benefits this new type of science might bring.

However, I always got the feeling that even with concerted efforts to compare across efforts in citizen science, there was still some underlying disconnect between program expectations and what might qualify them as ‘successful’.

So I decided to interview program coordinators and compare what they had to say about recommendations for success to those in the published literature. Lo and behold, my suspicion was correct. Now, my work with Max Pfeffer, recently published in PLoS ONE, describes the many aspects of success and provides a new lens to look at the diversity of citizen science programs.

PLoS Blog
16 May 2013
C Copper

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