Muki Haklay

University College London | UCL · Department of Geography

We are in a time of rapid change on multiple levels. Change can be seen as positive by one group and negative by another. As a result, different perspectives on any given change can draw completely different conclusions. In these proceedings we want to address different approaches to change from all kinds of perspectives within the realm of citizen...

Citizen science is currently at the forefront of environmental scientific research and public policy for its potential to improve environmental governance, restore epistemic trust and help address some of the most stressing environmental challenges. Although citizen science is gaining increasing popularity, there is little empirical evidence to sup...

This report is licenced under: CC BY 4.0 The workshop was organised by Katja Mayer and Claudia Göbel in collaboration with the Zentrum Soziale Innovation ZSI. Cite as: Mayer, Katja; Göbel, Claudia; Alhutter, Doris; Aspee Quiroga, Nicolle; Berr,Katharina; Cavalcanti de Alcântara, Rafaela; Gichuki, Leah; Gold, Margaret; Golumbic, Yaela; Haklay, Muki...

The editors of the Community Science Exchange want to say a big thank you to the 29 reviewers for reviewing for Community Science in 2023. Peer‐review is essential to the process of doing and publishing scientific findings, and will be a pillar of our successful expansion of science by, with and for communities into mainstream science. Many papers...

A broad understanding of the aims and objectives of the international open science movement was recently adopted with the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, expanding the focus of open science to include scientific knowledge, infrastructures, knowledge systems and the open engagement of societal actors. In response, recent discussions on s...

Key Points Ethical science must include community engagement The Community Science Exchange promotes ethical responsibilities of editors and authors The grand environmental challenges can only be faced and surmounted with ethical, inclusive approaches

Sub-Saharan Africa is often presented as the continent most vulnerable to climatic change with major repercussions for food systems. Coupled with high rates of population growth, continued food insecurity and malnutrition, thus the need to enhance food production across the continent is seen as a major global imperative. We argue here, however, tha...

This deliverable covers the various steps that have been undertaken to develop the path to creating and developing a European Citizen Science Academy (ECS Academy). It is an aggregation of documents and reports that have been elaborated throughout the first year of the ECS project, with a community of practice of citizen science educators and train...

More than ever, humanity relies on robust scientific knowledge of the world and our place within it. Unfortunately, our contemporary view of science is still suffused with outdated ideas about scientific knowledge production based on a naive kind of realism. These ideas persist among members of the public and scientists alike. They contribute to an...

Introduction: The global challenge of sustainable development is encapsulated in the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which China is committed. As outlined in the UNESCO World Water Assessment Program (WWAP) report, water fundamentally impacts on sustainable development, making the achievement of SDG 6 (water and sanitatio...

Sub-Saharan Africa is often presented as the continent most vulnerable to climatic change with major repercussions for food systems. Coupled with high rates of population growth and existing nutritional deficiencies, the need to enhance food production across the continent is thus seen as a major global imperative. We argue here, however, that curr...

Key Points The editors thank the 2022 peer reviewers

Citizen science is growing and increasingly realizing its potential in terms of benefiting science and society. However, there are significant barriers to engaging participants in non-Western, non-educated, non-industrialised, non-rich and non-democratic contexts. By reflecting on the experiences of 15 citizen science project coordinators, this pap...

Sapelli is a group of open-source applications, aimed to be used within a wider socio-technical approach which means that the software is expected to be used within a social process that considers inclusivity, equity, and risks and benefits. The software enables people with no or limited literacy as well as limited technical literacy to collect, sh...

When faced with an environmental problem, locals are often among the first to act. Citizen science is increasingly one of the forms of participation in which people take action to help solve environmental problems that concern them. This implies, for example, using methods and instruments with scientific validity to collect and analyse data and evi...

Introduction Co‐production with communities is increasingly seen as best practice that can improve the quality, relevance and effectiveness of research and service delivery. Despite this promising position, there remains uncertainty around definitions of co‐production and how to operationalize it. The current paper describes the development of a co...

To better support the adoption of Citizen Science (CS) as research methodology, institutional transformations in the majority of Research Performing Organizations (RPOs) are still required. The EU funded project TIME4CS aims at supporting such institutional transformations through the implementation of concrete actions triggering institutional chan...

In this talk, we will cover the potential of engaging people with and without literacy in the process of scientific knowledge production. Building on the methodologies that were developed by the Extreme Citizen Science group at UCL, we demonstrate the potential of any community, regardless of literacy, to participate meaningfully in designing and i...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can augment and sometimes even replace human cognition. Inspired by efforts to value human agency alongside productivity, we discuss and categorize the potential of solving Citizen Science (CS) tasks with Hybrid Intelligence (HI), a synergetic mixture of human and artificial intelligence. Due to the unique participant-c...

This article serves an invited response to Chris Santos-Lang’s “The Method of Convergent Realism” (2022). I respond from a social constructionist position, mixed with critical realism, that challenges some of the premises of Santos-Lang’s paper. I question if the use of convergent realism is appropriate for the example that is at the centre of the...

The overwhelming global dominance of modern industrialism stifles the visibility of alternative ways of being in the present and of what solutions to large-scale challenges may be appropriate. This paper describes how novel high-tech digital tools can be co-designed with people with different worldviews or ‘ontologies’ to better represent their nor...

Citizen science is an increasingly acknowledged approach applied in many scientific domains, and particularly within the environmental and ecological sciences, in which non-professional participants contribute to data collection to advance scientific research. We present contributory citizen science as a valuable method to scientists and practition...

Chapter “Extreme Citizen Science Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and Opportunities for a Human-Centred Design Approach” was previously published non-open access. It has now been changed to open access under a CC BY 4.0 license and the copyright holder updated to ‘The Author(s)’. The book has also been updated with thi...

Sub-Saharan Africa is often presented as the continent most vulnerable to climatic change with major repercussions for food systems. Coupled with high rates of population growth and existing nutritional deficiencies, the need to enhance food production across the continent is thus seen as a major global imperative. We argue here, however, that curr...

Humanity is currently confronted with a series of profound existential crises. Beneath it all lies a crisis of meaning, of being able to make sense of the world. If we are to overcome this situation, we need robust scientific knowledge of the world and our place within it. However, science is facing a number of serious challenges to meet these need...

Citizen science has been recognized for its potential to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in multiple ways (e.g., for defining and monitoring indicators, data production, etc.). In this paper, we focus on Extreme Citizen Science, which includes a set of situated, bottom-up practices, used for environmental monitoring purposes and...

The global challenges of sustainability are encapsulated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which 193 member states are committed. However, a key challenge remains in identifying appropriate methods, indicators, and the ability to monitor progress towards these 2030 Agenda goals. Citizen Science (CS), as a scientific activity in whi...

The participation of communities living in high conservation value areas is increasingly valued in conservation science and practice, potentially producing multiple positive impacts on both biodiversity and local people. Here, we discuss important steps for implementing a successful extreme citizen science project, based on four case studies from c...

Analysing patterns of engagement among citizen science participants can provide important insights into the organisation and practice of individual citizen science projects. In particular, methods from statistics and network science can be used to understand different types of user behaviour and user interactions to help the further implementation...

Citizen science (CS) is promoted as a useful practice for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this contribution we explore how CS aligns to the SDGs overarching pledge to ‘Leave no one behind’. We propose a framework to evaluate exclusionary processes in CS. We interlink three dimensions of CS inspired by existing CS typ...

Positioning citizen science within the broader historical public engagement framework demonstrates how it has the potential to effectively tackle research and innovation issues. Citizen science approaches have their own challenges, which need to be considered in order to achieve this aim and contribute to wider and deeper public engagement. However...

Over 500 delegates took part in the third international ECSA conference in September 2020. Across 30 sessions, as well as keynote talks, e-poster presentations and more informal settings, they discussed and debated a diverse range of subjects related to citizen science. This special edition of ‘JCOM’ brings together some of the central themes that...

Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature—for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners commun...

The Sapelli smartphone application aims to support any community to engage in citizen science activities to address local concerns and needs. However, Sapelli was designed and developed not as a piece of technology without a context, but as the technical part of a socio-technical approach to establish a participatory science process. This paper pro...

As the scientific community, like society more broadly, reckons with long-standing challenges around accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, we would be wise to pay attention to issues and lessons emerging in debates around citizen science. When practitioners first placed the modifier “citizen” on science, they intended to signify...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can augment and sometimes even replace human cognition. Inspired by efforts to value human agency alongside productivity, we discuss the benefits of solving Citizen Science (CS) tasks with Hybrid Intelligence (HI), a synergetic mixture of human and artificial intelligence. Currently there is no clear framework or method...

This paper reports on a workshop during the Austrian Citizen Science Conference 2020 that allowed discursive conversation about the reasoning and the formation of opinions around assessing short case descriptions as citizen science, or not. Debater’s opinions on cases seemed fluid and often changed when new information became available. Hence, the...

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to suppor...

In line with the growth in citizen science projects and participants, there are an increasing number of guidelines on different aspects of citizen science (e.g. specific concepts and methodologies; data management; and project implementation) pitched at different levels of experience and expertise. However, it is not always easy for practitioners t...

In this chapter, we address the perennial question of what is citizen science? by asking the related question, why is it challenging to define citizen science? Over the past decade and a half, we have seen the emergence of typologies, definitions, and criteria for qualifying citizen science. Yet, citizen science as a field seems somewhat resistant...

To be as effective as possible in solving the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, conservation biology must minimize the temporal gap between knowledge production and action. Citizen science is a growing global movement that facilitates engagement of the public in scientific research at broad temporal and geographic scales. With a wide...

Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature - for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners comm...

Purpose: Infectious diseases are one of the leading causes of death among children under five (U5s) both in India and globally. This is worse in slum environments with poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), good nutrition and a safe built environment. Globally, a One Health (i.e. human, animal and environment) approach is increasingly...

Citizen science has grown as a form of public engagement in science. Middle-aged citizens who are already consuming scientific information should be a potential outreach group. Behaviour change research in citizen science participation among the demographic is lacking. A total of 47 museum visitors aged 40-60 years took part in qualitative question...

This article offers an assessment of current data practices in the citizen science, community science, and crowdsourcing communities. We begin by reviewing current trends in scientific data relevant to citizen science before presenting the results of our qualitative research. Following a purposive sampling scheme designed to capture data management...

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are valuable for displaying and analyzing spatial data, revealing spatial patterns that may otherwise go unnoticed. The ubiquity of web and mobile platforms, used to create and share geographic information has reified the value of GIS to a wider audience bringing new popularity to GIS. As a result, GIS and Geogr...

Purpose: Infectious diseases are one of the leading causes of death among children under five (U5s) across both India & globally. This is worse in slum environments with poor access to water, sanitation & hygiene (WASH), good nutrition & a safe built environment. Globally, a One Health (e.g. human, animal & environment) approach is increasingly adv...

Policy and science show great interest in citizen science as a means to public participation in research. To recognize how citizen science is perceived to foster joint working at the science-society-policy interface, a mutual understanding of the term “citizen science” is required. Here, we assess the conceptualisation and strategic use of the term...

Traditional data sources are not sufficient for measuring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. New and non-traditional sources of data are required. Citizen science is an emerging example of a non-traditional data source that is already making a contribution. In this Perspective, we present a roadmap that outlines how citizen science c...

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the ‘biomedical model’ which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus...

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the 'biomedical model' which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus...

Advances in technology and the proliferation of data are providing new opportunities for monitoring and tracking the progress of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1. As the latest framework for assessing and monitoring the alleviation of poverty, inequalities and environmental degradation, progress on meeting the 17 SDGs...

Citizen science for disaster risk reduction (DRR) holds huge promise and has demonstrated success in advancing scientific knowledge, providing early warning of hazards, and contributed to the assessment and management of impacts. While many existing studies focus on the performance of specific citizen science examples, this paper goes beyond this a...

Citizen science (CS) is increasingly becoming a focal point for public policy to provide data for decision- making and to widen access to science. Yet beyond these two understandings, CS engages with political processes in a number of other ways. To develop a more nuanced understanding of governance in relation to CS, this paper brings together the...

Rapid urbanization in the global South is adding epidemiological and nutritional challenges and increasing disease and health burdens for citizens. Greater movement of people, animals, food and trade often provides favourable grounds for the emergence of infectious diseases, including zoonoses. We conduct a rapid evidence scan to explore what is kn...

This report aims to enhance our understanding of stakeholder mapping for co-created citizen science initiatives. It presents and discusses findings from an international two-day stakeholder mapping workshop with researchers, event organizers, communication experts, and artists realizing citizen science activities. Participants identified examples o...

We are coming to the end of three years of Doing It Together Science, a coordination and support action to widen and deepen public participation in science across Europe. This article explores our efforts to expose half a million people to a wide variety of types and depths of citizen science, and how to bring together people from science, industry...

Food vendors are pivotal in the local food system of most low‐income informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, despite being seen as an obstruction and as agents of disease and filth by city authorities. This paper explores the geography of these foodscapes – defined as public sites of food production and consumption – in selected low‐income settleme...

Data collection applications on smartphone devices support indigenous communities in developing countries to record and preserve traditional ecological knowledge, collaboratively collect data around issues that are important to them and use these tools to subsequently identify locally-acceptable solutions with global impacts. Development of these i...

Heigl et al. recently proposed an international definition of citizen science based on quality criteria for projects. As an international group of scholars with extensive background in the theory and practice of citizen science, we find the opinion by Heigl et al. antithetical to the creativity, innovation, and bottom-up pathways to knowledge gener...

Brazil, home to one of the planet’s last great forests, is currently in trade negotiations with its second largest trading partner, the European Union (EU). We urge the EU to seize this critical opportunity to ensure that Brazil protects human rights and the environment. Brazil’s forests, wetlands, and savannas are crucial to a great diversity of I...

The geographic data and knowledge collection and dissemination via authoritative professionals only – characterized as the top-down scheme – has been shifting in the past few years to the bottom-up scheme, in which citizens and laymen generate data they later use as information in various applications and services. This is a new era in the history...

The growing interest in citizen science has resulted in a new range of digital tools that facilitate the interaction and communications between citizens and scientists. Considering the ever increasing number of applications that currently exist, it is surprising how little we know about how volunteers interact with these technologies, what they exp...