Data Management in Citizen Science Projects: share your experience
Citizens' contributions to scientific processes, i.e. Citizen Science initiatives, are blossoming all over geographic scales and disciplines. A Citizen Science and Smart City Summit, organised by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in 2014, identified the management of citizen-collected data as a major barrier to the re-usability and integration of these contributions across borders. The JRC is now following up on these findings with a survey designed to capture the state of play with regard to data management practices on the local, national and continental scales.
Anyone involved in Citizen Science projects are being asked to take the survey to provide the JRC with invaluable information and insight into Citizen Science projects and best practice.
With this activity, we want to help improve the understanding of current data-management practices, and use this as a basis for discussion with Citizen Science communities around the globe. Beyond the aims of pure stocktaking and awareness raising, this survey should also establish a baseline for prioritising subsequent actions and for measuring progress.
After discussions with members of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and the international Citizen Science Association (CSA), it was decided to open the scope of the survey to the international community, so that non-EU and globally acting organisations could also benefit from the results.
The survey will be open until 31 August 2015, and the outcomes of the subsequent analysis will be available by the end of September. The results will be shared publicly and dissemination will include the same channels as this call for contributions.