Citizen science
Date
2023
Authors
Jaeger-Erben, Melanie
Becker, Frank
Prüse, Baiba
Mendoza, Jimlea Nadezhda
Gutberlet, Jutta
Rodrigues, Eliana
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Transcript
Abstract
The term citizen science originates from Anglo-American contexts and generally de-scribes the procedure of involving citizens who are not institutionally anchored in academia as active participants in a scientific research process. The use of the term “citizen” (etymologically derived from the Anglo-French word citisein “inhabitant of a city or community”, approx. 13th century), indicates a specific understanding of the persons involved, who, in the sense of the term citoyen coined in the French Enlightenment, actively and autonomously participate in the community and help to shape it. The tasks of citizens in this context range from collecting data to co-de-signing the entire research process, applying scientific quality standards, and producing scientifically usable results (Haklay et al. 2021; Pettibone et al. 2017). Citizen science as a designation for a specific form of knowledge production is mainly used in the European and North American context, where a differentiated research and funding landscape has evolved since the beginning of this century (Haklay et al. 2021). Similar approaches can be found in other parts of the world, but are framed under alternative terms such as community science (Conrad and Hilchey 2011) and community-based research (Amauchi et al. 2022). Citizen science brings together a multiplicity of approaches ranging from mass data collection events for citizens to forms of independent or self-determined research by non-academic groups or communities, calling the term itself into question (Eitzel et al. 2017).
Description
Keywords
Community-based Research Laboratory (CbRL)
Citation
Jaeger-Erben, M., Becker, F., Prüse, B., Nadezhda Mendoza, J., Gutberlet, J., & Rodrigues, E. (2023). Citizen science. In T. Philipp and T. Schmohl (Eds.), Handbook transdisciplinary learning (pp. 41–52). Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839463475-006