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This guide is a resource for anyone interested in participatory (citizen) science. This includes:
While this guide focuses on UNLV and Southern Nevada, it contains resources that are national and international in scope.
Some organizations, agencies, and practitioners are moving away from the term "citizen science" in the United States. However, citizen science is a term that is well-recognized globally and many resources in support of participatory science will be found by searching "citizen science." This includes books, research literature, online resources, and projects.
This guide provides two example definitions of these terms from the U.S. federal government.
Several U.S. federal agencies, organizations, and many researchers are shifting away from the term citizen science. The Environmental Protection Agency provides a definition of participatory science:
Participatory science is the involvement of the public in scientific research, often in collaboration with professional scientists and scientific institutions.
Participatory science uses the collective strength of communities and the public to identify research questions, collect and analyze data, interpret results, make new discoveries, and develop technologies and applications – all to understand and solve problems.
It is a transformational approach to environmental protection that engages volunteers, allowing large numbers of people to contribute to science.
In citizen science, the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems.
The term "science" does not fully encompass the breadth of projects and disciplines available. Additionally, not all projects are focused on the environment or the natural world and its phenomena. Social sciences and humanities-based participatory projects are available too. Additional resources on this guide will help you find projects of all types.
Participatory science is part of the open science ecosystem, and the UNLV University Libraries supports open science in several ways. These include open access publishing, hosting an institutional repository, data management, personal and research identifiers, and more. Each of these contribute to open science.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) includes participatory science in their Recommendation on Open Science under "open engagement of societal actors" which
refers to extended collaboration between scientists and societal actors beyond the scientific community, by opening up practices and tools that are part of the research cycle and by making the scientific process more inclusive and accessible to the broader inquiring society based on new forms of collaboration and work such as crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and scientific volunteering. In the perspective of developing a collective intelligence for problem solving, including through the use of transdisciplinary research methods, open science provides the basis for citizen and community involvement in the generation of knowledge and for an enhanced dialogue between scientists, policymakers and practitioners, entrepreneurs and community members, giving all stakeholders a voice in developing research that is compatible with their concerns, needs and aspirations. (p. 13-14) (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
