Abstract
The rise of citizen science in the past decade has brought many opportunities for scientists and publics alongside many challenges and questions regarding best practices. These include questions regarding public engagement, project design and measures of success. The aim of this study is to better understand what makes citizen science projects scientifically successful, and highlight what can be learned and implemented in future project design. We focus on scientifically productive projects as a success measure that can encourage greater scientists’ involvement in citizen science, and analyze five of these projects for factors that contribute to their success. We found that although all projects have strong scientific goals, they all have additional strong emphases on communication and social practices, providing a good user experience and generating motivation and empowerment. We provide five heuristics for the future design of citizen science projects, which focus on engagement and communication features which we believe are important for citizen science project success.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 465-480 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Environmental Communication |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 19 Nov 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 18 May 2020 |
Keywords
- Public engagement
- citizen science
- design
- public participation in scientific research
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
