Citizen Science

Throughout its history, science has benefited from contributions made by amateurs, but since the creation of Internet an increasing number of important projects have recruited large numbers of ordinary people to their teams, in what is now called citizen science. Prominent examples include Galaxy Zoo in which volunteers annotate photographs of distant galaxies and eBird in which bird watchers systematically document their observations out in the field. This phenomenon has become sufficiently extensive that several experts have offered typologies for classifying projects, establishing citizen science as a new research field in its own right. Among the implications for general science and technology convergence is the fact that the nature of expertise may shift, offloading much of the detailed technical knowledge onto information systems, and clarifying theoretical concepts, motivated by the need to integrate into the community many nonscientists, but in consequence also making it easier for a scientist in one field to participate in another. Consideration of citizen social science illuminates how citizen science more generally can facilitate convergence of science with society, guided by fundamental research on how science is understood by nonspecialists.