On the 27th November 2023, the LIBER Citizen Science Working Group and SciStarter joined forces for the third in a three-part webinar series focusing on Citizen Science engagement and best practices. The webinar –‘Libraries and the Valorisation & Dissemination of Citizen Science Results’ – highlighted how academic libraries can play an important role in sharing and emphasising the reliability of Citizen Science research outputs.
Learn more about LIBER’s work with Citizen Science here: https://libereurope.eu/working-group/liber-citizen-science-working-group/
View the SciStarter platform here: https://scistarter.org
hello welcome again to the to the this Li and size starter webinar it is my great pleasure to welcome you at this webinar co-organized so by Liber and SC storter we will address the topic of the valorization and dissemination of Citizen science results and focusing on the role that we play as libraries of course citizen science is very related to the mission of libraries as it brings citizens um and science um um close Clos to closer together and today we’re going to deepen one aspect and um within the numerous way in which we can invol be involved in citizen science um and that’s um about the dissemination of results so making them well known uh we can do this by engaging with local communities and all kinds of volunteers or we can um um contribute um with um activities such as um um enhancing typologies and metadata to make citizen science results more discoverable um I will be um hosting this webinar from the Liber and citizen Liber citizen science working group together with my colleague Rosie from the Liber office and Darlene from side starter our first speaker will be um Dolores mes from the national and University Library in the ZB um where citizen scientists are contributing um to library activities as a new um kind of volunteers so we’re very curious about um the insights that um Dolores is going to share with us uh so Dolores please go ahead uh hello okay uh I will start to share my screen now and I hope you will see it okay can you see it we see the screen and you can hear me well and we hear you well okay I can start yes okay uh so hello everyone uh my name is Delores and together with my colleague Alisa uh I created this presentation and I will talk about citizen science activities that our library uh have conducted and the final products of our citizen science activity we are from the national and University Library in Zagreb Croatia and I have to say uh that we are very thankful to SI starter and Liber for letting us talk about our citizen science activities and products um so I hope that this uh would be interesting to everyone of you uh so how did we get involved involved in citizen science uh it is all because of one big International project L led by Libor uh named citizen enh housed open science in Southeastern Europe higher education knowledge hubs and the project aims to raise awareness of mainstream open science and citizen science practices in Southeastern European countries before we enter this project we didn’t know much uh about citizen science uh but after we uh entered the project and met with our International colleagues and also after after we uh read a lot of literature and after we uh had some educational materials for size from size starter uh we recognized that this is very important uh for both our local community our uh scientific Community but also for all libraries uh and uh we wanted to conduct some citizen science activities uh for uh our communities and we tried uh to build our citizen science activities around our own collections on Library collections to make them more visible and today uh I will shortly talk about those citizen science activities and I will um rather talk about the tools that we have used for those citizen science activities uh because we were not funded for any of this citizen science activity we did not have any money at all no no Finance uh so we uh had to find our own ways to conduct these citizen science activities without uh any money needed so here they are uh our first story uh our first citizen science activity was named Beast like people and it was held uh in uh one National manifestation called Festival of Science and this manifestation is also within um citizens s month so it is held on April and uh in our uh National University Library we have one Department named creation web archive and with this department we are trying to archive all web pages that contains HR domain HR which stands for Republic of Croatia uh and also we have some U thematic collections about um web content on specific topics so we wanted to involve the public to try to uh collect the content for one of those um thematic Collections and we chose Beast because it was related to the Festival of science theme and we as Librarians were professionals here because we are known in information Sciences uh and we partnered with Public Library from one one toown near Zagreb and we conducted our citizen science activity tools that we used uh first uh we educate our citizen scientists uh there were 25 high schoolers about the content they have to search for um building thematic collection uh because uh not every content is right for creation web archive also uh we printed some educational leaflets and we used Google forms for data collection for data publication we used Heritage software Wayback machine and creation web archive those three tools are part of creation web archive and this is something they are already paying so we didn’t uh need any extra money for this and the final product uh is um published thematic collection B like people on creation web archive uh and uh it is an Open Access everyone who wants can see this uh see this thematic collection and and our authors were also citizen scientists uh so this is this was our first citizen science activity our second uh was named uh self-help and well-being in online academic environment and it was help for the purposes of cation bookmark uh it is a national manifestation here in Croatia in in which we tried to um um to make reading more interesting to people and last year been was think about yourself with and in the focus was also self-help so for the purposes of this citizen s activity we wanted to find out uh how many articles uh and those were scientific or professional articles are there in Catia that talks about those topics self-help well-being and bibliotherapy uh we partnered with faculty of humanities and social sciences in Zagreb and one professor led us to have two two classes of this citizen science activity uh and students were searching and they were trying to do some systematic review together with us uh with Prisma model to find out uh the articles that are talking about those three topics that I mentioned also our scientist were was iakina uh she’s um she’s expert in help and she is from faculty of humanities and social sciences in Rea um sorry tools that we use for data collections first we educated the students about the importance of those topics then we educate them about uh article selection about what keywords should they use about filters that they should use and so on and we used portal of catian scientific and professional journalist huk it is a very special portal here in Catia uh where we have every scientific and professional journals which are in Open Access in whole Republic of Croatia so it is a great portal for this kind of Citizen science activity also we use uh Microsoft Excel for data entering and we use Omega distance learning for for data sending because um it is a tool used by The Faculty of humanities and social sciences in Z for data publication uh we analyzed those data that we got from our citizen scientists and we created a scientific poster that we presented at o AI 13 conference in Geneva and it is also published on Z no and I have to say that currently we are writing an scientific article on data that we have collected through this citizen science activity uh this is the final product uh it is uh our scientific poster the topic of biotherapy selfhelp and well well being in open science in Catia and uh here I can happily say that we have won the best poster award for this specific poster uh our third citizen science activity was named havaton uh it it is somewhat um similar to be like people because we also connected with our department uh creation web archive so we presented our first activity be life people uh in one uh National Conference here in Croatia and one librarian came to us and asked us uh if we could maybe um do something similar in her Public Library on the topic of Ian Goram kovachich Ian Goram kovachich is very famous catian author here uh and uh we uh we created hon with the goal of collection of thematic Network content but in the form of a competition uh so we had three h for free classes in gymnasium St caras it is town near zagre and the winner of each havaton was the person who got the highest number of the correct web content on div go kovachich because not every information citizen scientists can find on internet is true or is correct uh and we wanted to stimulate our citizen scientists critical thinking digital skills uh information literacy and so on uh we also held this uh citizens sence activity as part of European year of skills uh and we also partnered with representation of European commission uh in Republic of CAA and Europe darling carat tools that we use for data collection first before the havaton we send our future citizen scientists educational videos on quation web archive to introduce them with creation web AR because they didn’t know what creation web AR is uh then we wrote down online competition regulations uh and also we went to the classes and uh held some educations on web searching and we were using Google forms for data entering uh tools for data Publications are uh the same as we use for B like people here is the final product the final product is thetic collection that is published on operation with archive it is about Ian Goran kovachich that author and our authors for citizen scientists for kids uh and um here I must say that uh this next year this would be uh this will be national uh citizen science activity we applied for Ministry of culture and media in Republic of Croatia uh for funding and we hope that it will be approved uh later this week or next week uh and we will try to connect with more public and school libraries in whole Republic of Croatia to create more havaton in schools in throughout whole country and last our last citizen science activity was DEA uh in our national and University Library we also have graphic collection and that graphic collection uh has all postcards among others old postcards of ZB and we saw that on those post they are not just historical buildings but also we saw some trees and we wanted to uh invite the public and scientists to try to identify the trees that we have on our postcards in graphic collection uh so we did it uh we partnered with eth and 12th gymnasium in Zagreb uh with some students who are uh very ecologically friendly and who likes nature and we also partnered with um dendrologist professors from faculty of Forestry and Boots technology in zap and these are the tools that we use we used all digitized posters of Zagreb but we also used mobile phones why because we uh told our citizen scientists to go to the locations where uh old old posters were firstly um photographed and try to recreate those photos at the spot at from the same angle and then we tried uh to see what Tre species were there in the past 100 years ago and what are there at the same place now uh and we advis them to use plet mobile application which is also free mobile application and they tried to identify Tre species at spot after that we went to the faculty of Forestry and Bo technology and there uh dendrologist educate our students our citizen scientists uh how to identify the trees based on their leaves uh and after that uh citizen scientists together with the scientist try to identify tree spe tree species both on old postcards and also uh on newly recreated photographs through Google Drive tools that we used for data publication were AR story Maps it is part of our digital digital library so it is also tool that we are not thing uh then all the digitized posters of Zagreb then canva because we needed cona to write down the names of the tree species and we also use creation encyclopedia online for the additional content and I will show you that soon one of the final product was this we added the names of all three species that we found through this citizen science activity to our library catalog so everyone who who are trying to find some are some old posters and see what trees are on them and also we create we created web page named denda and here is a quick uh 40 40 seconds long video where I will show you the web page so this is dka uh and here you can see uh all postcard and newly recreated photograph of the same uh postcard and with all the Nam of the tree species and on the left side you can see additional information about those tree species and you can click on it and go to the creation encyclopedia online and find everything that you want on all that tree species so this is our final product and to conclude uh as you can see Librarians can excel in citizen science within information science because we are Professionals in information Sciences also a l liaries can provide their collections for scientific research and also make make the collections more visible and and available to the public uh also utilizing free online and mobile applications is an option we also advise to partner with other departments in your library if you have them because maybe they have some additional resources that your department maybe do not have yet uh then collaborating uh with external Partners can enhanced project promotion and task distribution and here I have to say that it was very very valuable for us to partner with public and school libraries because public and school libraries are closer to their local communities and we as a national library are closer to our scientific community so this is a great way to partner with different Library types uh then uh offering education in data collection can stimulate citizen scientists to G gain new knowledge availability for potential inquiries during online activities is crucial and the more we talk about our citizen science initiatives the more potential Partners we get to know and I hope that here are sitting another future partners that we might have in some future citizen science projects and this is this is all for me I hope that this was interesting uh and if you will need uh to know anything more about it you can always contact me or Alisa on this email here so thank you for listening uh thank you very much Dolores um we have a general Q&A at the end so more of a discussion but now we have time for one or two questions for Dolores uh does anyone have a question okay okay um I have a question for you okay um what kind of training did you did you Pro um provide to your citizen scientists to enable them them to um perform this um all all these different task in a correct way and to use your platform for instance uh okay so we had different different educational methods for each of our four citizens science activities in uh two citizen science activities we as Librarians were informational experts so um it was the best option for us to uh explain to them how to collect the data at the spot because um they they had some additional questions so we were there and try to answer everything they wanted to know uh as for the other citizen science activities um we suggest our scientists to educate our citizen scientists and also we advise them to uh talk not not that scientifically but to talk like a part of the public so our citizen scientists can understand everything so that that was the way that we tried to educate our citizen scientists but we had we had some video materials also pamphlets it depend on citizen science activity itself but thank you for a question well I I Haven I this made me think of another question but um I would like to um to give the floor to the audience first anyone has an additional question for Dolores okay if not how do you perform quality okay great yes okay uh good day to you all uh my name isawa and uh actually uh this is the first time I joined this important Gathering and it is highly educative and interesting uh but uh my question is uh uh like with regards to what Dr Sarah you have said you have raised that the training I think uh the uh Miss doares should uh uh like tell us about are they using handson like materials to learn what the science is all about or what are the proper methodology so that this research can be replicated in other areas especially in developing countries and the like thank you very much um sorry I I didn’t uh understand the question uh because I cannot hear you very well sir so if you can please write it down in the chat so I can answer to it maybe uh maybe later after all of this presentations I would be very grateful to you because I I cannot hear very well my speakers are not that uh good so thank you please um if I understood well the question was about the tools that you used um um to to to give to give training how did you elaborate them tools that I use for the train training for citizen scientists um kind of in the kind of information that you provided on on which kind of platform uh well we used we used the presentations like this in PowerPoint presentations it was a public speaking in person and also as I said we used some pamphlets printed materials uh we used some um we were we were writing down the regulations for havaton uh in the PDF so we sent it before the competition to our citizen scientists um it it depended uh on on the citizen science activity uh itself but uh I can talk about it for another half an hour so it was a various way ways of tools that we used and all of all of all of the tools were um uh for for those tool for those tools we did not need any money okay thank you very much we’re sure that you can can continue for another half an hour and questions are are popping up but we have to go for to our next next speaker now we’ll keep your questions um for the discussion in the end so our next speaker is Karen Cooper from North Carolina Carolina um State University uh she um she contributed to the US efforts to um um identif identify citizen um citizen science result um results and Publications which um LEDs to an increase of citizens um um science data that they that they could find so please Karen go ahead all right hi everyone uh thanks for having me here um yeah I’m I’m a professor of public science at North Carolina State University and I’m going to talk about uh what the scientific literature can tell us about the the impact of of Citizen science and advancing research in different disciplines um and I’m going to start by making a a distinction about sort of how citizen science shows up in the scientific literature because I’m also um one of the uh associate editors and chief of of a journal called citizen science theory and practice which is a journal of the citizen science Association and this is a journal that is about the field of Citizen science right so this the distinction that I want to make is that citizen science is both a discipline and it’s also a method of research so citizen science as a discipline we have journals like this and many types of Scholars that contribute to understanding the field or the discipline of Citizen science people Scholars of human dimensions of Science and Technology studies communication um human computer interactions critical geography philosophy ERS a whole range of social of of Scholars in the social sciences and Humanities who publish papers about citizen science but then that’s very different from scientific advances from the many different fields that use citizen science as a method to advance those disciplines right and you know whether it’s um astronomy or meteorology conservation environmental Sciences psychology marine biology entomology microbiology biochemistry information Sciences like whatever those fields are that are using the methods of Citizen science that is very separate and actually we don’t even publish those kinds of papers in citizen science theory and practice because we want those to go into their discipline specific journals um so just to clarify there’s a whole body of literature that is about citizen science and it is about Advan advancing the field of Citizen science and then there’s tons of literature also that is advancing other fields using citizen science methods and that’s what I want to focus on today because that literature is dispersed all over the place and it’s like how can we understand um the impact that citizen science is having on these different disciplines okay so um and I’m I’m going to focus on the field of ornithology and how citizen science has advanced um Ornithology and that’s because that’s actually where my background is and because I had always suspected that um that there’s that orthology probably relies very heavily on citizen science because bird watchers do so many things that involve collecting data um they like to identify birds and count Birds they like to monitor Nets s they ring you know or band Birds even in some places in some circumstances are able to collect eggs and this has gone on for centuries and if anyone knows a bird watcher you know they also love telling anyone who will listen what they’ve seen or heard or banded or monitored so they there’s definitely a culture of of of uh observing birds and monitoring nests and of sharing that information but still how so for a while I was really struggling with like how could we figure out the impact of Citizen science in Ornithology and um and then I saw this paper this was a number of years ago it came out in 2011 although I didn’t notice it till a few years later um and I’m just going to tell you first about this paper this paper was a review of just like it says of the different claims about migratory birds and climate change this paper had nothing explicitly to do with citizen science but they had done the hard work of doing a review new paper and I’m just going to describe the paper a little bit so you can see why it was like this great opportunity to get insights into citizen science so in this paper it was many many authors who brought their expertise together and they um synthesized the literature and then I made this table to summarize what they found and they synthesized literature on birds and climate change into these 10 claims that were divided into these three sections some of the claims were about patterns like spring migrants migration is advancing due to global climate change some were about the mechanisms and some were about the consequences right climate change affects Community com composition now these experts then in addition to create uh synthesizing these claims from the literature they also each individually um rated what is the knowledge basis how much effort has been put in to understanding these claims and you can see that the knowledge basis here ranged from some claims like about consequences were very low other claims like in the pattern area were very high and then they also G marked each one each claim for how much support it has like how valid they think the claim is how much scientific evidence there is and again some were very low or moderate I should say and some were very high and these two things support and knowledge base were correlated so they looked at that too and you can see like there’s one claim that first claim you know it has so much a strong knowledge base strong support the other claims really varied um and this coefficient of variation is basically the opposite of consensus you can see that the claim that had high knowledge basis very low variation which means High consensus among all the scientists and these really varied okay so this because they had done this paper and they had done it without considering citizen science they just were synthesizing the literature they didn’t consider the sources of the data it was the perfect study system for me to ask these questions to say okay well let’s use this as a basis to quantify the scientific contribution of Citizen science to this particular area of inquiry migratory birds and climate change how much of what they reviewed and synthesized was from citizen science um the second objective of our research was to assess whether scientists held citizen science results in equal regard to the results from professional scientists right because they evaluated all those claims but they weren’t even thinking about where those um papers were from and then finally to evaluate the extent to which citizen science was readily visible or noted in the focal studies so I’ll just share what we found um so first uh to quantify uh the um sorry I gotta move everybody’s H here so just to quantify if you look over here you know we went through all of the papers for all these different claims and you can see that the percent of Citizen science papers uh varied from some of the from the low of 24% to a high of 77% so so each of these claims had a good amount a moderate to extreme amount of Citizen science data informing these claims about migratory birds and climate change um and you can see that the highest ones were really up in when it comes to patterns which is what citizen science data are particularly good for at distinguishing patterns at really large scales and over long time series um and then we were curious that second question like well um do professionals hold the data um are there any differences in in the support for these claims based on whether it was based on had a lot of Citizen science in it right because there’s a big variation here in how much support um there is for these claims and what we found there just graphing like the percent of Citizen science supporting that claim and what the export expert knowledge basis for the claim was um there was no relation which was a great thing we were super excited about that so for example that claim that has the highest uh support H is half informed by citizen science and then these other ones that have you know moderate support some sure have a lot of Citizen science in them some have less have mostly professional science in them so there was really no relationship it didn’t matter whether it was mostly informed from citizen science or mostly from professional scientists that did not determine whether whether there was a lot of support from the experts about the information so just to summarize this was our paper it was called The Invisible prevalence of Citizen science um in in Global Research on migratory birds and climate change and just to summarize uh there was like over 170 papers that we were able to class classify from that literature review and about half of them overall were based on citizen science so we could say that about half of what we know about migratory birds and climate change comes from citizen Science Now towards that final question we had about the extent to which citizen science is readily visible we asked well how many of those papers used the terms citizen science and the answer was none so none of those papers about migratory birds and climate change would have been found using a search for the term citizen science um we had to really read through each paper we had to look at the acknowledgements we had to look at the methods to just decipher that that it was volunteer generated data um and actually the reason we classified 171 out of 17 3 because for two of the papers we actually couldn’t tell who the where the source of the data were um so anyway that’s why our title was called The Invisible prevalence super huge impact of Citizen science in this area and yet it’s really hard to see that it’s just really invisible um and part of that is because of terminology there’s a lot of different terms for citizen science um and there’s a lot a lot a lot of different claim or different scientific findings these are just some um you know that even like our longest groundbased weather data comes from citizen science it’s how we know partly how we know the climate is changing there’s AST astronomical uh discoveries from citizen science like I said entomology uh discoveries um ones about like retinal neurons uh invasive uh ladybirds uh genetic structure of loggerhead sea turtles and majored monk seals recolonizing the Mediterranean things really rare things that people might see all kinds of of findings um that might be found with any of these terms or really with probably most likely with none of these terms at all and then there’s also more like Grassroots Community science which also has another whole host of different names and terminology and a lot of different types of scientific discoveries that actually are even less likely to appear on the scientific literat lure so it can be really difficult is my bottom line to um to assess the scientific outcomes from citizen science projects there’s a few tips a few places to look because you can think about when citizen science is most often used and and I’ll just conclude here with a lot of times citizen science data are used to in any studies that involve large spatial extents Continental scale studies it’s pretty likely it’s not just done by a scientist long time series that go decades pretty certain it’s not going to be you know it’s going to be longer than one scientist’s lifespan is probably going to involve citizen science those kinds of discoveries discoveries uh research that happens in private places like backyards places where scientists actually don’t have access probably involve citizen science um studies a really rare phenomena scientists can’t be everywhere at once and they rely on eyes ears of people in other places um and then also just when there’s lay expertise a lot of Natural History experts are not scientists um a lot of a lot of those experts are amateurs so-called or and contribute to Citizen science there’s also a lot of areas where there’s just a data Deluge there’s automated you know um photographs either of space or camera traps or or whatever and they’re used uh they need a human mind an ie to process those data oftentimes to train AI is where you’re going to see more and more citizen science um or times when there just needs to be human creativity where these algorithms can’t solve these puzzles and they really need a human mind to figure them out and then there’s areas in environmental health and public health and environmental justice um areas where there’s a lot of Grassroots concern that’ll often also involve citizen science so when you’re looking for the impact of Citizen science um on and the scientific impact uh a lot of times these are the kinds of studies that you need to find um because it often won’t be tagged with the term citizen science or really any particular term at all Al righty thank you uh thank you very very much for this great for this great presentation um there are already some questions in the chat for you uh so the first one comes from Alisa Mark and who um well sees that um papers are scattered all over and so she asks you what database did you use to look for citizen science literature um I feel funny saying this to Librarians but I mean I actually use Google Scholar a lot um and I uh is that okay I’ve seen some people say it was okay um web of science sometimes um uh yeah and I um we’ll use a lot of those different Search terms I’ll get Google alerts on a lot of those different terms and then um yeah they’re just hard to find I just keep my ears out you know um for things uh I used to do a lot of blog posts about citizen science and and when I when I did that people who would read it would sometimes send me more examples because they knew I was looking I I haven’t done that in in many years so I don’t people don’t usually send me examples anymore okay thank you very much and well then we have a great bunch of questions by Ian Tran um we’ll maybe just start with the first one um and he asks if there are any examples of Grassroots um um um um studies or studies led by citizens um scientists uh that were um not um just gr um um Source from the beginning and that are being embraced by the scientific Community um yeah that’s a great question because um some journals um we’ve seen some journals not accept not even consider papers if they’re led by people without scientific credentials um but then other journals are coming around to realize oh no there’s a lot of lay expertise and a lot of reason to consider those papers um there’s uh a new Journal called Community science that actually explicitly is for um both scientists and people who who don’t have those credentials to publish papers together about community-led initiatives like in all different disciplines um and I think there’s other journals I I feel like Pier J and a few I feel like there’s a few others that are starting to embrace that but I um but I think it’s still is often a challenge when someone is not affiliated with an institution um I’m I’m just looking at the other questions how can we Elevate validate non-institutional aligned research yeah um yeah I mean it is definitely a challenge and I think a lot of it does come from um that the editors of a lot of the journals are Gatekeepers that and so um yeah there needs to be more awareness raised among the editors um and a lot of environmental justice communities are struggling to get their air quality data studies so yeah um oh and yeah and so yeah so I’ll put the link in the chat in a minute so yeah the Journal called Community science well there’s also one called environmental justice uh so there’s a few journals that are specific for that um for as outlets for disseminating those kinds of research um okay thank you very much the discussion promises to become very interesting we’ll move forward with our next speaker to um have a joint discussion in the end so our last speaker is um ma G from un the University of bordeau where there are are also doing lots of re research will be highly interesting for this audience because they’re working on ways to search for CI for citizen science Publications so the use of typology typologies metadata and so on so the question that they’re asking themselves is how do we make those Publications and data discoverable MAA please go ahead thank you sharing the screen we see your screen right thank you so hello everyone thank you for organizing this webinar first I’m Ma garer and I work at the University of border and this presentation will be about citizen science Publications and the means to identify and give them exposure so what do we talk about libraries and citizen science it so happens that the University of Bordeaux approached its documentation Department to gain over viw of studies conducted using the approach in its own scientific production and research the initial observation revealed a substantial lack of coherence as Karen just not noticed it and it is extremely complex to identify all citizen science projects conducted in a territory or within a university due to the absence of a common referential framework therefore it became necessary to work on the identification of this type of research before conceiving its exposure and dissemination but as Hackley says there is a wide array of terms that are used to describe citizen science so what keyword should we use to identify citizen science articles and Behind these questions what are the underlying issues so it’s it’s to improve indexing and through improving indexing improving identification to better understand the diversity of these research projects and to improve identification for better exposure and to address this question of identification through keywords we turn to the use of a theor system so how did we proceed so here’s a bit of our methodology uh we sought to identify if there were existing theor theor tools aimed at addressing this need for identification and standardization of descriptive vocabulary in a field so here are three explor the Thor one is from in uh which uh is an institution dealing with ecology the second one is about General disciplines and the last one is focused on health disciplines so the very start of our methodology consisted of a literature review in scientific production exploring which study have already focused on the issue of keywords in citizen science and following this literature review and with the aim of Designing our own thorus we Define our research AIS as focusing on the centrality of the citizen science keyword the importance of highlighting the special the possible need for spec specification per discipline demonstrating several hierarchical levels of the citizen Sciences in aorus and finally visualization and representation of relationships between terms and for this we’ve LED two main studies the first one is a bibliometric study and the second one is a semantic study and the bibliometric study aimed to understand the Dynamics at work in the use of keywords on the web of science platform so which is a platform that allowed us to build a large Corpus that was necessary to address these preliminary questions so how to observe Hier hierarchy between the keywords considering the number of publication using them how to observe the emergence of disappearance of some keywords and how to observe a citizen science ecosystem conduct this study our scope is the global production in the English language concerning citizen science um so we needed several steps to narrow down the Corpus to the Publications that truly interested us uh that you can you can see the different set on the right side of the screen and ultimately we obtained a final query that you see at the bottom of the screen screen allowing us to create our first citizen science CPUs and based on the volume of result generated by other keywords we found and that were present in the theori comprising our literature review we selected three other keywords whose significance is similar to that of the keyword citizen science so we chose community based participatory research Community participation and part participatory action research and as results of this initial research part we noted the importance of not confining oneself to a single keywords related to Citizen science to describe one’s research in this regard um our recommendation are as follows don’t make the citizen science keywords the only entry point in the thorus it needs to be combined with other keywords we should also avoid using one keyword in general exploring the others also helped in understanding interdisciplinary connections and citizen Sciences being very plur disciplinary it seems difficult not to take this element into consideration when it comes to characterize one’s research and in terms of so here comes to the semantic analysis so in terms of semantic research our goal is then to identify y a large number of terms related to this theme and to identify the type of relationships that they maintain among themselves therefore as you can see on the right we are basing our research on a total of more than 20,000 keywords to be analyzed finally based on our knowledge and experience of Citizen science we selected five and 55 unique keywords that were all related to Citizen sciences and that will be the subjects of reflection for us regarding their relational organization and this study allows us to identify six semantic Fields where we can put all of these uh 505 keywords that are monitoring Community citizen cooperation crowd and participation so we condu we conducted a semantic anal is of each of the mentioned semantic fields to understand both the meaning behind their usage and the interpretations of the terms font within the semantic fields and these six semantic fields that allow us identifying four main categorization of Citizen Sciences through the nature of the group the level of participation the knowledge and Productions and the modes of Engagement and now that we have a better understanding of keywords through their use uh meaning organization preferential and role we can move towards designing a tool that presents the keyword are the most suitable to Citizen Sciences um before exploring uh possible tools it’s important to meet the identify needs of the target maret audiences so for researchers we have to pay attention we have to pay attention sorry to the size of Theus they may need something easier to help them choose suitable keywords it’s spor to let them know about this sorus and here Librarians are positions are the relay as a relay of information so for what is uh useful for researchers is to Define keywords to define the kind of Citizen science project that will be made also to discuss with participants that implication and the terms used to describe their participation as for librarian it’s a tool to identify publication from researchers from their own University in the citizen science field and to analyze the Kora with more information about the kind of Citizen science they are reflecting on so for librarians can be useful for their own citizen science projects to help researchers in their paper research but also to Define their keywords and to help governance to Define what kind of bibliometry related to Citizen science they want you to produce so several tools were available to us so firstly we um we started with the theoris which was our stting Point both in terms of research and projection as we’ve seen the theori presented previously ofer limited entry into the field of Citizen Sciences there was a total of 19 words on three theori when we had identified more than 500 and therefore initially the goal is to propose a comprehensive tool so it’s important that the thorus offers a nuanced approach to each word or words that require it which can also vary from one language to another the theorist must be able to to offer Framing and definition spaces and it seems to be a suitable tool to to develop in that its initial conception addresses the need we identified in terms of identification and harmonization of usage it is also a simple tool to use in and its usage is familiar therefore for testing our category or categorization uh it’s remain something that we will keep using and develop however it has its limitation because its organization does not facilitate guidance among all the terms and as these terms are all presented as equivalent from a structural point of view thus we explore all the forms of organizing organiz or sorry organization and structuring of knowledge related to Citizen Sciences because we would like to explore solutions for relationships for condition and for user experience so among them we experimented flow charts that are manifest stations of which allow visualization of a decision making process it is possible to locate each piece of information in relation to the others to the others and then to represent each step of this process its visualization um which allows seeing everything at a glance is also a hindrance as it does not facilitate the implementation of textual information and these must be reduced so as not to further overload the decision- making process however it’s a tool uh for from the design from our design point of view to represent the question that the user may ask and very useful for it and here are two experimentations that we’ve done to try our on tool and as you can see on the left uh chart you can see the orange boxes uh to present texal information and making them bigger would make it too difficult to navigate so we are very constrained and the green boxes present suggested keywords another approach is through the use of filtering questions so here is a decision making tool consisting of four questions that have the advantage of dynamically presenting the display of options given to the user although exploration is possible through filtered responses it’s difficult to highlight the relationships and complexity of terms among the themselves so this visualization objects present different approaching approaches and are useful for us to work on a tool that allows understanding each keywords and our required specification counts question Sy has to be a question system um a popup system with explanation has to be has to have room for additional textual information a flow diagram running in the back end and final proposal and the final proposal gathers all keywords and for this for the design of all tool we are using a mind map a mind map allowing a global V visualization with a descending approach starting from our entry keyword CTI and science that you can see on the left uh graph uh which is the whole one and the the second one is just a section of it so it consists of four branches represented of four levels of analysis that are necessary for the characterization of Citizen Sciences citizen science articles so nature of the group level of participation knowledge and Productions and modes of Engagement and we are currently working with a designer to whom we summed up the needs we identifi through all of our research and uh here is the first drive sorry here is the first DFT where you can see the question system and there is the navigation uh navigation system behind that works as a flow flow diagram system you can also see at the bottom a reminder of the chose all the chosen keywords and on the right side a popup window for extra information when necessary and we are also currently working out the contextual additional information that might be needed to explain keywords so this study aimed at better understanding the citizen Sciences ecosystem of information designing a tool that reflected its comp lexity and that can help Librarians and researchers to find their way also our research on this tool aims at giving us primary reflection framework to think an an enriched knowledge organization system that we will use in our own research project project called echodu this re This research has been uh led by also Rafael bats and clarot I’d like to thank you here thank you for your attention thank you very much for this St of presentation and your I must say very impressive work there’s someone in the chat who agrees with this and um has a question for you have you extended the thear into a formal onology that can be used in a Knowledge Graph and we are so the answer is no but we are part of the second the following research is to think how we can go uh further even further in uh building this relationship and ontology is obviously one of the um uh perspective that we could have at this but for the moment uh we are sticking to really realize a very practical tool that can be used uh so first within our University but hopefully um uh abroad everywhere because it’s will be in French and English great thank you very much so there’s plenty of work that you can still do so I’ll hand over to Darlene for the um the next part of this session which is the debate and the questions for all for different speakers okay let me just oh boy of course that was going to happen and we did practice I’m sorry hold on one second find the right window thanks for your patience okay let’s try this again h I’m so sorry folks this is what happens when I have too many windows open okay one more time how embarrassing you should all be able to see my screen thank you thanks for so I’m Darlene cavaliere the founder of scarter and I’m with um Arizona State University in the school for the future of innovation in society I want to thank Tara cxus on the line here for putting these slides together too Tara runs our library Network which is what I’m going to talk about this is mostly aimed at public libraries in the United States although we have a growing um community of libraries from other countries that are quickly becoming part of this network It’s all under the umbrella of libraries as Community hubs for citizen science so we started working with libraries in part to really address the needs that we were seeing among potential would be volunteers the citizen scientists um uh an ability to access some of the equipment tools even simple materials if it’s not easily found around the house this was a b this is a barrier to entry um a lack of feeling like you’re involved in something social because many citizen science projects are actually done very independently and so they can be they can feel socially isolated and then also Al um uh a real need for communities to come together and draw upon their conclusions to take things to the next level it turns out libraries as you well know this can address all three of those issues so in working with the libraries we started to try to understand more of their needs and how citizen science actually may um present a nice resource for them and so libraries come in different shapes and sizes way different capacities given in uh their funding structure but they’re so plentiful and they can reach people that could be difficult to reach especially in less populated areas rural areas for one um so we started working together to develop a series of Citizen science kits that would contain everything somebody needs in order to learn about a project get involved in the project and then steps to take to follow on take action back at that that Library as that Community hub for them libraries have become pretty amazing in the ways that they’ve been able to shape introductions to Citizen science programming around topics um leveraging community members as subject matter experts um and doing this across all different um all different ages really and in the end this we hope also helps um people who run these projects looking for the data scientists um concerned community members policy makers so that answer is why why did we get involved in libraries as Community hubs for citizen science sarter is a website that helps connect people to Citizen science projects participatory science projects thousands of projects are listed on SC starter some of those we saw featured here today or saw in the comments projects from Z Universe projects from in naturalist as well as um those that are on um singular platforms or just uh operated through Google form people add their projects we have a team that reviews them and then publishes them and so we work with um National organizations International organizations and the public at large to make it very easy for them to find something to do something they’re curious or concerned about we will definitely have a project for them and in the process we develop trainings and really create what we call the ligaments of making sure that there’s no barrier um to moving on to the Next Step that might be the next project that might be trying something that does have specialized tools or equipments uh equipment that might be doing something as part of your identity within a community like the girl scouts or perhaps a a Verizon employee and you’re trying to get your volunteer time going with your company um we look at the whole lifespan of a user and make sure that there’s multiple on-ramps for somebody to engage in citizen science throughout their life um Karen is here she’s our director of research too so Karen does a lot of research as you heard some of it um and then we take what Karen and her team publish those findings and we use that to really make side starter better so the network which we encourage all libraries to join um the network goals are to build the capacity of libraries to become citizen science hubs that relate to the community you serve that could be teens that could be people looking for job skills training that could be libraries that um so solely serve social um services like um you know uh Alcoholics Anonymous whatever it might be we’ve seen citizen science used within these programs in really fascinating ways support a community of libraries so that that is what the network is there’s professional development training that’s available where we can actually in the United States earn professional development credits continuing educ education credits there there’s a network that you can call upon to look for different examples and case studies how is another library that might have the same capacity that you have how are they approaching this what ideas can you borrow from them um very easy to use um downloadable customizable materials so you’re not spending time and resources trying to create flyers or bookmarks or posters or even the kits um programming IDE ideas tera’s in the process now of developing simple recipe cards that you can use for different programming activities and ultimately to accelerate important scientific research um so I’ll go to the next slide has some of the um resources that we provide to the network are the trainings that I mentioned earlier these are self-guided online trainings that do come with badges um and you can check them out at sar.org SLT trining monthly professional development webinars this is where the idea exchange happens where you can ask questions we kind of navigate you to different resources but you’ll hear from other Librarians too that’s pretty fascinating part of those webinars and then guides and additional resources these are the ond demand customizable downloadable materials to help you easily um not just build a kit but look at ways that people have moved them into circular ation through different um software programs to catalog depending on what you use um look at successful models of related programs that happen in libraries to reach new communities um different marketing and promotional um assets that you can use and ways to measure the results of that and the outcomes and then most recently is the development of an ambassador program these are ambassadors that may already have done citizen science and are looking for ways to just be part of a a team that helps introduce citizen science through libraries um and then also embassadors that are being trained they’re already Library volunteers and they’re being trained on ways to introduce the concept of Citizen science into libraries some of them prefer to just test the kits build the kits so really looking for ways to mobilized volunteers who want to take another step kind of a a larger step into the world of particip atory Sciences through their local library some of the outcomes that you see um we suspect within a couple of months we’ll have a thousand members of that Library Network which we’re very very excited about we have more than 700 now um hundreds of kits are in circulation now we know that 100 libraries in the state of Arizona already circulate kits and they were the first team that we worked with so we expect to see those numbers grow across the country um these programs are heavily evaluated through Arizona State University so we know that the library users who use the kits report increased gains in awareness and interest knowledge about citizen science their ability to get involved in the scientific process and we’re happy to see that most say most who have checked out a kit say they intend to check out another kit that’s all very promising signs sir and that’s the end of my presentation thank you and Sarah should pass it back to you okay um let’s go back to the questions then um and and and the debate um I can answer some of these this last one there the funding for the kit creation is a really good question so the kits are designed to be relatively low cost I think on average they’re probably about $100 a kit by the time you purchase all the equipment some run a little bit more um and then there are a variety of ways thanks Tara between 150 and 250 depending on the kit there are a variety of ways to obtain obain funding and we do share that information with the network as well in the United States some of the funding comes directly from the state so there are State Library associations that are funded by the federal government that are there to support libraries within their states um and they’re all organized under uh one organization called kasla CA another again in the United States is um through the federal um government the National Institutes of Health gives money to the National Library of Medicine libraries within the regions of the National Library of Medicine actually also are eligible for Grants to bring citizen science programming and kits into their libraries so Tara I don’t know if you want to add anything else about um where funding comes from for the yeah I was just GNA I was putting it in the chat um it’s it’s very varied I think that every state in the in the US has different funding structures when it comes to libraries and many um offer many grants to libraries from different federal agencies a lot of libraries are self-funding the kits uh with their programming budget uh or asking the friends and family groups that they’re associated with um and then you know tapping into sort of this larger um hot of funding around stem programming that’s especially popular in libraries here and there’s lots of different funding opportunities and pools for stem and so you can really make the case that the citizen science programming is an exemplary stem program and uh we see them applying for for Grants to fund um through different you know leveraging that those stem opportunity grants yep and Tara thanks for putting all these links here yes all those links please check them out um and uh sign up for all the webinars you can also I should I’ll put the YouTube um channel for all of our past webinars that you can check out as well yes go ahead I was gonna say if there aren’t any more questions for me or or for Tara I think one of the things we wanted to try to do is have each presenter ask one of the other presenters a question is that right yes right all right so since I’m moderating maybe we’ll have um maybe I’ll put Dolores on the spot here and Dolores would you like to ask one of the other presenters a question we’ll just start a kind of informal discussion among the presenters but everybody who’s tuning in here please do add your questions to chat there we’d like to weave them in uh thank you Darlene uh yes I have questions but for both Karen and Matilda uh because I saw that in both of your presentations you said that researchers are not using the term citizen science for citizen science um re research and they’re using other terms like par participant science or something like that what do you think is a solution that um for the for the researchers to start calling citizen science exactly citizen science science what do you think the solution is maybe Karen can answer first and then Ma and thank you [Music] um yeah I I don’t know the answer to that like I don’t know what the solution is and in fact in the US there’s a move to not call it citizen science at all um uh and also like some of the other terms you know like community based participatory re research um participatory action research like those are very specific methods that you know yes they could be seen under this umbrella of Citizen science or participatory science but like there’s a reason people use those specific terms because they have specific their specific techniques um uh yeah so uh but anyway I don’t have it’s just I feel like we’re going to always have to work around it because there’s not everyone is gonna get get on board with with seeing a need to like just for purposes of aggregating the impacts see the need to do it and to so to answer your question I guess I don’t know either the correct solution I don’t think there is one uh but if we um yeah we’ve noticed that citizen science is uh rejected in some uh by some researchers uh so they so they use some other terminology because citizen is questionable as a word what does it mean to be a what is citizen are you just a citizen because you have papers that could be one of the questions you could ask yourself but uh what we also found um is we think there are a big role from the Publishers and the depending how it works works from a university to another but from the University uh because they also uh or the labs because they also suggest their researchers to use some keywords because they’ve been used before in this same laboratory or because the Publishers is used to this keywords and um so it could be people with whom to work if we want it uh citizen science only to be uh to be the only entry point thank you and I’ll just add and I mean I think the trickier thing is how to distinguish papers that are just about that method versus that are like being used to advance like a research question in a particular discipline um so maybe if if journals said okay one of your key words has to be about your methodology you know maybe people would use it there or something yeah this a bit what we’re trying to Define in the in our categorization because one keyword could be about the methodology keyword could also be about the participants so there are different things you can describe through keywords I see uh Alisa yeah uh yes thank you uh well what I would like to know is have you noticed that in 10 years that have passed I mean this question to Karen so that in 10 years that have passed from your uh investigation and from your research the field in terminology has cons Consolidated a bit because people are more talking about citizen science and it’s more spread I would say spread the word and especially with your initiatives like SC SC starter and um um European citizen science Association and uh European commission initiatives yeah definitely because that paper I think it came out in 200 I don’t remember 12 or 14 maybe it was like when the citizen science Association formed shortly after the European citizen science Association formed yeah I think that those uh the formalization of the field with that term definitely helped give more credibility and then there was there was a whole Spade of papers that I feel like came out that where the title would be you know such planet found from citizen science you know it actually be in the title and like touted which was a huge change um you know and that doesn’t seem to happen quite as much now uh but so yeah I think there definitely has been a shift and like I said though I think it’s still just still a little hard to parse out like whether it’s a discovery or whether it’s just about the field itself um but yeah I feel like it’s there’s much stronger reputation um so people don’t try to hire it is often now any other questions y yes I want to say something concerning this uh discussion uh actually citizen science as uh the past uh presenter has said it is doable it has it it is it can be refed as a discipline and then as a and to say that uh researchers have to be restricted to utilize citizen science in the right up there would be some kind of restriction and uh they may think of uh uh I think there should be a a way through which this can be reconciled there should be a Reconciliation among the Publishers since they are the one that ensure the type of Publications to be done uh that that will uh limit the way through which a lot of array of words will be utilized to mean one thing so there is a need for uh like a Reconciliation or consensus among the Publishers to accept one time so that the progression of that can be symetrically or biometrically analyzed easily thank you yes anyone to com on that I can uh this is indeed something we uh recommend that it’s citizen science is a kind of an umbrella term that could be used to describe all of the publication using this method or um content but that wouldn’t be enough to describe really [Music] the the the the the content to characterize Faithfully the the publication and there is also the it’s also also questions languages as um in French we only use the Expression if I translate literally uh participatory Sciences which is also quite different from uh from English and also don’t know about other languages so it can be um an obstacle for uh people from other languages to accept coties and Sciences Also may uh translate into something else so if I may ask have you use mapping technology techniques to search for the relevant terms like data mapping or mapping techniques in order that you can see some during your scientometric analysis AB utilize some data Ming techniques to lead This research you mean you say it you mean use data mapping to for This research yeah yeah yeah yeah no no no we didn’t okay all right any other questions you can either jump in or raise your hand hand or put them in chat here it’s interesting conversation happening in chat by the way U um I have a question um um for Matilda and it’s about the applications of um her desus in which contexts or tools or databases um do you see it work or would you also like it to be used by citizens I I saw your question questions in the chat earlier um so you asked if we uh were thinking first about using it uh towards citizen scientists um that’s a question we actually didn’t uh ask ourselves we um of our initiatives really came from our University asking the library service what do we have in citizen Sciences in in all Publications in all BTO University apption and we didn’t know how to find them all of them because there was no um referential and so we worked towards that direction how um if you are a librarian or if you are a sci um a scientist how do you a researcher how do you um index it how do you describe it and I don’t know what usage could be done from a citizen scientists if uh the terminology also would be because a lot is about methods if it would be transparent enough to be understood uh but I when um Dar was um presenting the SC St platform I was browsing a bit the website and uh going through the advanced um research to see how you describe your the citizen science projects are uh listed in your system and uh maybe it could be an application because I don’t think what we’ve came what the keywords we found are similar in some way to what you use in your project finder but I also not sure if it would be easy to use for no no professional researchers and to your second question question uh so for the moment we are trying to um our first Target uh is uh Librarians since they are in touch with uh researchers Librarians because uh this is U important that these Publications can be found and give them a tool but also and maybe mostly researchers so they can add the beginning at the initial uh index in uh using a common referential yeah that’s question and we can follow up because I think there could be a practical application working with scarter um and we can show you how because our terminology can be updated we base that terminology first on just our best guess when we first started when we first set it up but then we do look at data what are people searching for what kind of keywords are they using and then how might we Nest projects under those categories but we can ground through some of that and then maybe apply some of your research there we can have a conversation offline with Karen too to see how that might work so I have a question regarding what Karen said that the name of the citizen science Association will change to the uh what was it the mouthful new name so the the um Association for the advancement of the particip participatory science so will this be changed on S starter platform as well or how would it have have an impact yeah we don’t really I mean we use it for the library work as you can see that’s kind of branded all citizen science you could see it in my yeah yeah but side starter itself s um we really don’t use the term too much if you’re coming through the site you know it’s not like citizen science you can do right on the site there’s more that we’re doing to just remove all of it because I don’t think for our primary goal is to help the public participatory science is not any more helpful than citizen science in explaining what we’re there for for a user so we’re we’re still playing around with that you can see that we look at like the the called to action why is somebody being asked to do something so I’m eventually you know we’re going to have to do something about citizens citizen science month and the library Network and how we present those two things but um I’m very grateful that we didn’t call our website citizen science and I just put a note in the chat I mean so like the journal which is part you know of the citizen science Association that name is not changing because that is considered the international like an international component of the association um but just domestically within the US there’s just was a lot of pressure uh to change the name and it’s it’s related to issues of inclusion um of diversity and inclusion and people feeling exclud that it was ex it has a different meaning here from my understanding than it does in other part in Europe yeah probably it doesn’t really mean like citizen of the world or just like person whose Civic mind like there’s a lot of politicized aspects to the behind the meaning of it here that makes it function as a um excluder okay I had a question for Dolores on another topic um but related topic obviously uh you mentioned on one of the activity the postcard activity that you you then asked you added the created products in the in the library catalog and as we were discussing uh uh the identification of what is produced by citizen Sciences I was I didn’t have time to look when you were showing the the slide but if you mention somewhere uh where it came from if there was um yeah is the fact that it come from citizen citizen science projects mentioned how do you uh on which citizen s project do do you think of for havaton D or what because they were different so it was D I think with the trees and Yesa uh so can can you just repeat uh the important part of the question please uh you I was wondering if on the after you added the this the the postcard the catalog if there was yeah if you said somewhere where it came from uh yes yes um yes we said that it came from uh yes on both web page thata which I showed to you where the species are uh are written uh we put on the side that it was all the product of uh this citizens C activity we thanked the students we also uh thanked the scientists who helped us and Librarians who built those uh this uh this web page and on catalog we also added uh tree species and uh everything about uh this citizen science activity links to to though to this citizen science activity so yes we added it and you also named all of the participants regardless of their place no we just said uh the the students from 8th gymnasium and from 12th gymnasium we we weren’t naming EXA exact names of each student on the web page okay thank you thank you for a question and I know we’re going to be wrapping up soon but I did want to address we do have some very good examples of success stories from libraries Karen mentioned referenced one that we did in Arizona where we helped um people who live against uh right adjacent to an active mine be able to access the specialized tools and equipment in order to monitor their environment in many different ways um because they suspected that the mine was doing active blast when they shouldn’t have been um and other environmental indicators so they were able to um learn how to use and interpret the data from air quality sensors um little earthquake Tremor sensors and other things this is where the library really becomes important because it’s a neutral trusted source resource within the community and it’s also a convenient place frankly for people not to have to store all the equipment or anything in their home um and Tara may have other examples we we definitely have other examples for the challenges part there the challenge that we is that the turnover in libraries pretty high and that’s also a benefit but you work through and you usually it’s a champion at that Library who wants to be part of this it’s not a library it’s a person there so they go through all the effort to become trained and help train their staff but if they’re then moved to another library and they’re in a library where they can’t really move forward the idea because a director might have a different you know might have different goals or objectives um that’s that’s a challenge I want to say 10 out of the 10 libraries that we first started working with had turnover within the first three years by the time we finish the pilot program now the benefit to that is a champion that goes to another Library who is able to set up the citizen science program and that Library helps is what helps us scale quickly so turnover is a big one um Librarians are often overworked they do everything as you all know um this is very different than working with museums our experience in working with museums is that museum people are paid to do their job not that they don’t go above and beyond and they’re phenomenal as well but museums tend not to take on projects that don’t have funding associated with it every single step to be funded um and that’s you know that’s a big barrier librar is a little bit different pretty creative also because they’re publicly funded usually in the United States so they have a little bit but the librarian seem to be very well willing and able to jump into multiple roles and so it’s a little bit easier to integrate citizen science in the libraries than it is the museums just as a an indicator and then um do we wna do we want to wrap it up or keep going with Q&A what would you like to do um I think you just gave us magnificent conclusion so I think we can wrap up all right well this was the third of our series of three if I’m not mistaken is that right right do another series I think and Sarah can you put the link in where somebody can find all three recordings perhaps I don’t know if one exists but maybe we’ll at least send that out in a follow-up email to with a link to the recording to everybody who registered and we’ll be talking about the this more at the European citizen science Association conference in April in Vienna I think where libraries in the United States are going to be playing a very active role in helping people to experience the eclipse and do some citizen science during the eclipse year on April 8th we’re excited about that too thank you to our panelists who joined us here super informative discussion um thank you for everybody who tuned in um let’s keep the conversation going join the Liber Network join the libraries um as Community hubs for citizen science Network um they will not overlap in term that’s why we work together our um services and resources and what we share complement each other so I do encourage you to join both and um hope to see you again soon thank you everyone thank you bye