The approaches employed in citizen science nowadays are varied and constantly changing (Pelacho et al., 2021).
Table 4.1 Citizen science activities according to their main objective, including diverse methodologies
| Main objektive | Methodologies | Good practices |
|---|---|---|
| Type 1 | ||
| Better management of natural resources | Contributing with pictures. Identifying and cataloguing them | |
| Community-based methodologies, which combine academic science with local knowledge: contributing with data, stories, local culture, etc. | ||
| Promoting focus groups, interviews, co-created actions and reports, as well as local, regional, national, and international meetings | Biodiversidad | |
| Virtual | ||
| Model Forests | ||
| GAP2 | ||
| SnowChange | ||
| SEO/BirdLife | ||
| Type 2 | ||
| Better research results | Identifying and classifying systems (galaxies, planets, cells, animals, and plants, etc.) on online platforms | |
| Transcribing handwriting texts or translating documents | ||
| Serious games | ||
| Distributed computing | Galaxy Zoo | |
| Old Weather | ||
| Einstein@Home | ||
| Type 3 | ||
| Better management of citizen science projects | Constitution of associations, observatories of citizen science, etc. | |
| Collaborative networks for supporting other projects | ||
| Research and/or elaboration - ideally with citizen participation - of guidelines on communication, ethical issues, quality of data, dataset management, among other issues | ECSA conference | |
| Debian | ||
| EU-Citizen. | ||
| Science |
Source:
Pelacho, M., Rodríguez, H., Broncano, F., Kubus, R., García, F. S., Gavete, B., & Lafuente, A. (2021). Science as a Commons: Improving the Governance of Knowledge Through Citizen Science (K. Vohland, A. Land-Zandstra, L. Ceccaroni, R. Lemmens, J. Perelló, M. Ponti, R. Samson, & K. Wagenknecht, Hrsg.; S. 57–78). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_4