twitter

Wednesday, 6 July 2016

The science of citizen science: Exploring barriers to use as a primary research tool

Biological Conservation
Available online 8 June 2016
In Press, Corrected Proof — Note to users



doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.05.014
Get rights and content

Highlights

•
We surveyed citizen science projects to uncover their goals, methods and outcomes.
•
We compare these to scientists' perceptions, preferences and requirements of data.
•
Scientists' preferences may be limiting applications of citizen science data.
•
Citizen science projects surveyed have variable goals and data quality.
•
Transparency and accessibility of metadata would facilitate data use and partnerships.

Abstract

Biodiversity citizen science projects are growing in number, size, and scope, and are gaining recognition as valuable data sources that build public engagement. Yet publication rates indicate that citizen science is still infrequently used as a primary tool for conservation research and the causes of this apparent disconnect have not been quantitatively evaluated. To uncover the barriers to the use of citizen science as a research tool, we surveyed professional biodiversity scientists (n = 423) and citizen science project managers (n = 125). We conducted three analyses using non-parametric recursive modeling (random forest), using questions that addressed: scientists' perceptions and preferences regarding citizen science, scientists' requirements for their own data, and the actual practices of citizen science projects. For all three analyses we identified the most important factors that influence the probability of publication using citizen science data. Four general barriers emerged: a narrow awareness among scientists of citizen science projects that match their needs; the fact that not all biodiversity science is well-suited for citizen science; inconsistency in data quality across citizen science projects; and bias among scientists for certain data sources (institutions and ages/education levels of data collectors). Notably, we find limited evidence to suggest a relationship between citizen science projects that satisfy scientists' biases and data quality or probability of publication. These results illuminate the need for greater visibility of citizen science practices with respect to the requirements of biodiversity science and show that addressing bias among scientists could improve application of citizen science in conservation.

Keywords

  • Biodiversity;
  • Citizen science;
  • Data quality;
  • Outreach;
  • Public participation in science;
  • Research
Corresponding author.
1
Burgess and DeBey contributed equally to the work.
2
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
3
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02131, USA.
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Posted by at