Maximising the impact and reuse of citizen science data

There is an increasing number and diversity of citizen science projects, which can potentially generate new data at a lower cost than professional data collection (De Longueville et al. 2010; Antoniou, Morley & Haklay 2010; Friedland & Choi 2011) and arguably with greater value than those generated by expert knowledge alone (Fischer 2000; and see Danielsen et al. in this volume). When considering Ten Principles of Citizen Science (ECSA 2015), in particular openness and accessibility, these citizen science data have the potential to be a valuable source of information for decision-making and policy formation on local, regional and national scales. However, for the data to realise their full potential, a number of factors have to be considered. This chapter identifies the factors that affect citizen science data using examples from environmental monitoring and geographic information. These factors include open data standards and interoperability; data reliability and alignment with government environmental regulation and monitoring requirements; the contextualisation of data to enable users to evaluate its possible reuse; and the reuse of project results (see box 22.1). This chapter addresses each of these factors in turn to help specialists and non-specialists alike to better plan citizen science projects.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom