Research pick: Citizen Science - "Toward a socially-distributed mode of knowledge production: framing the contribution of lay people to scientific research"

The idea of citizen science has been around for as long as science. There were always members of the public, often educated and moneyed, admittedly, who took their curiosity about the world to a higher level. In the digital era, one can pique one’s curiosity in ways the amateur natural scientists might never have dreamed of. Admittedly, there is much yet to learn about the outside world, but a powerful computer in everyone’s pocket has opened up investigative realms that were wholly inaccessible in a bygone age.

Writing in the International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems, a research team based in Italy and Kenya has looked at how lay people continue to be involved in knowledge generation and dissemination. They have analysed more than 80 research papers to uncover the role of citizen scientists in knowledge co-production.

Rocco Palumbo of the University Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rosalba Manna of the University ‘Parthenope’ of Naples, Italy, and Alexander Douglas of The Management University of Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, found that the citizen scientist’s role depends critically on the degree of autonomy the person has and the type of relationship they establish with the “expert” scientists.

There is a spectrum of citizen science activity. At one end there are lay people who may assist with laborious or time-consuming tasks such as data collection and classification that require intelligence but a low level of expertise. At the other end of that spectrum, there are those with managerial and planning expertise who might work alongside scientists on a given project. In between, there are a whole range of activities and levels of expertise that might make an important contribution to a given citizen science project.

“The propensity of expert scientists and lay people to bring diverging inputs in knowledge co-production should be acknowledged and carefully addressed, in order to avoid drawbacks on the knowledge production ability of research institutions,” the team writes. They add that the impact of citizen science projects needs to be assessed in detail with a view to understanding their economic and social benefits.

The team suggests that scientists themselves should be encouraged to consider lay people as a fundamental human resource to help them deal with the challenges raised by the likes of big data in the current scientific environment. The citizen scientist should for their part be given the benefit of recognition as a key stakeholder in the scientific process and the accumulation of knowledge gleaned from the projects with which they assist.

Palumbo, R., Manna, R. and Douglas, A. (2021) ‘Toward a socially-distributed mode of knowledge production: framing the contribution of lay people to scientific research’, Int. J. Transitions and Innovation Systems, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp.381–402.