Corey Jackson, Assistant Professor, The Information School
April 20 @ 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Interlocutors: Carving Out a Role for Information Professionals in Citizen Science
5013 Vilas and on Zoom
https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/94048381593
Citizen science — an approach whereby amateurs actively contribute to the production of scientific knowledge — has experienced dramatic growth in the last decade. While citizen science has increased public participation in science and led to the production of new knowledge in many scientific fields, many science teams face significant challenges in building, managing, and maintaining citizen science efforts. The field would benefit from examining how existing citizen science projects produce scientific knowledge and the role of science teams in that endeavor. This presentation reports findings from a survey (n = 67) of citizen science project organizers who have launched projects on the Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org/) platform. The findings reveal that citizen science creates a host of new challenges for science teams ; chief among them are integrating citizen science data artifacts into existing scientific workflows, postprocessing of datasets, and identifying long-term funding and convince collaborators of its efficacy. I discuss how these challenges might be addressed by collaborating with information professionals.
