Citizen Science Working Group

There are several ongoing efforts to create a definition for citizen science or to adopt the best terminology for public engagement in research activities.

One good description of citizen science used by the European Commission is:

Citizen Science refers to the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources.

The LIBER Roadmap to Open Science makes a set of four strong recommendations to European research libraries, recommendations which remains guidelines for our working group.

Citizen Science, or the participation of the general public in the scientific research process, is an important element in establishing new links between science and society. It is thus essential to implementing Open Science, can contribute to innovation tailored to the needs of society, lead to reciprocal learning and foster a scientific culture across society as a whole.

The LIBER Citizen Science WG formally began in March 2019 and held its kick-off meeting during the LIBER Annual Conference in Dublin (June 2019). It is part of the LIBER Steering Committee Innovative Scholarly Communication, chaired by Dr. Giannis Tsakonas

Priorities

We aim to deliver webinars, recommendations, white papers, templates, reading lists and case studies over the two-year life of this Working Group. Our immediate goals are to:

1. Initiate and/or participate in a research project (by October 2021);
2. Complete the Working Group team (by July 2020);
3. Sign two partnerships with external organisations (by October 2021);
4. Deliver a template (or a suite of templates) with accompanying advocacy for a “Single CS Contact Point” that could be implemented in research libraries (by October 2021);
5. Organise and deliver a webinar (by July 2020);
6. Release a Librarian’s Guide to Citizen Science (considering the existing model created by SciStarter/University of Arizona in the USA (by July 2020).

To reach our goals, we act in six strategic directions:

1. Projects;
2. Staff development;
3. Partnerships and participation;
4. Building Citizen Science Infrastructure at Libraries;
5. Advocacy and policy;
6. Creating a Librarian’s Guide to Citizen Science.

News