Citizen Science is the involvement of the non-academic public in the process of scientific research - whether community-driven research or global investigations. Citizens do scientific work - often working together with experts or scientific institutions. They support the collection, analysis or description of research data and make a valuable contribution to science.
Citizen science is both an aim and enabler of Open Science. It can refer to citizens actively and openly participating in the research process itself, often through crowdsourcing activities. This includes aspects such as data collection, data analysis, volunteer monitoring and distributed computing. Alternatively, it can also mean greater public understanding of science facilitated through greater access to information about the research process, including the ability to use open research data and to access journal articles openly available.
Citizen Science and Open Science together can address grand challenges, respond to diminishing societal trust in science, contribute to the creation of common goods and shared resources, and facilitate knowledge transfer between science and society to stimulate innovation. The issues of openness, inclusion and empowerment, education and training, funding, infrastructures and reward systems are discussed regarding critical challenges for both approaches. You might consider Citizen Science and Open Science jointly, to strengthen synergies by building on existing initiatives, launching targeted actions regarding education and training, and infrastructures.
- Extracted from the Policy Brief on Citizen Science and Open Science by the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA)