Collective Knowledge and Creativity: The Future of Citizen Science in the Humanities

Citizen science is a contemporary reinvention of some research practices of the past when ‘unprofessional’ researchers contributed to scientific projects led by academics; a worth-noting peak of research undertaken in this paradigm had been observed in the 19th century. In the 21st century, citizen science mostly resides in digital environments and depends upon eInfrastructures which not only provide citizens with access to research data management, but also play the role of novel scientific communication tools aiming to engage and support citizens in their research contributions. This paper’s main purpose is to introduce the concept focusing on citizen science within the Humanities where its use is still limited compared to other research domains, as well as frequently confused with crowdsourcing. We also present some initial outcomes of the user studies undertaken within the EC-funded Civic Epistemologies project featuring a set of three international focus groups and a web questionnaire; these help to understand better the current attitudes and challenges in this area. Finally the paper delves into some possible reasons for the slower uptake of citizen science in both the humanities domain and digital cultural heritage and explores to what extent such projects contribute to ‘collective knowledge’ as well as to creativity.