Overview of Data Storing Techniques in Citizen Science Applications

Interest in citizen science and the number of related projects have increased considerably during the last decade. Citizen science revolves around gathering data and using it. This means, that data storing is a vital part of any citizen science project and can affect the success or failure. Many researches focus on the citizen side, while the data side is often left out. This study aims to fill the gap by trying to find the current data storing practices in the field of citizen science. A systematic literature review was conducted and multiple similarities in data storing and management techniques were identified between different citizen science projects. Results show that most projects used a traditional relational database to store data, a separate web interface to add, use, modify, and access the data, and data validation was left to users by having them vote on existing data. Data models always considered the data provider (citizen) but left out the end user in their design. In the future, the results will be compared to ongoing citizen science project and see if it is possible to improve the efficiency and overall quality of citizen science databases.