Using crowdsourcing for research projects

The phenomenon of crowdsourcing – enabling the crowd to get involved in the activities of an organization by means of new media (Estelles – Arolas, Gonzales – Lordon – de – Guevara, 2012) – is drawing the attention of research teams. It is successfully used by the biggest scientific centres both in case of life sciences and humanities. The following article is supposed to compare various strategies of applying this phenomenon to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. 40 crowdsourcing projects were subject to exploratory observation. Their description was based on the desk research analysis of Internet websites, applications and other Internet sources. On the basis of variables describing the ordered task, the character of the crowd, incentives built into the process and the method of providing answers an empirically rooted classification of the described projects was created. Its detailed description made it possible to highlight the ways research teams use crowdsourcing and to define the areas which the authors should take into consideration planning the utilization of this phenomenon in their work: connecting the kind of the offered task with the moment of the research process at which it is applied, defining the level of expertise necessary to carry out the task, building into the process appropriate incentives and choosing the appropriate method of verifying answers