This week, we would like to recommend the reading of the following article: Fraisl, D., Hager, G., Bedessem, B. et al. Citizen science in environmental and ecological sciences. Nat Rev Methods Primers 2, 64 (2022).
It falls under the topics of interest in the PREMISS project, such as citizen science and its use in different fields. Citizen science is an increasingly acknowledged approach applied in many scientific domains, and particularly within the environmental and ecological sciences, in which non-professional participants contribute to data collection to advance scientific research. The article presents contributory citizen science as a valuable method to scientists and practitioners within the environmental and ecological sciences, focusing on the full life cycle of citizen science practice, from design to implementation, evaluation and data management. It highlights key issues in citizen science and how to address them, such as participant engagement and retention, data quality assurance and bias correction, as well as ethical considerations regarding data sharing. The authors also provide a range of examples to illustrate the diversity of applications, from biodiversity research and land cover assessment to forest health monitoring and marine pollution. The aspects of reproducibility and data sharing are considered, placing citizen science within an encompassing open science perspective. Finally, the article discuss the approach’s limitations and challenges and present an outlook for the application of citizen science in multiple science domains.
Enjoy the reading!