The author describes how Citizen science works in general and which kind of motives participants have, how important it is to have a active community for long-term motivation in which area most of the citizen science projects root in.
He describes that since almost everybody does use a smartphone in their daily lives, many citizen science projects use smartphone apps, often with geo coordinates a a main focus. Maximilian Ueberham notes, that you do not have to be a citizen scientists to benefit from citizen science. In some projects, the collected data set is available as Open Data to the public. We liked especially that the article highlights the impact of citizen science on society. Maximilian Ueberham writes “The afford for communication, coordination and data protection does need more financial and personal resources than in regular science projects, but the additional value can’t be just put in that relation - the value of citizen science reaches far beyond the projects themselves.”
The second part of the reportage is a interview with David Zeigler, who is working at the museum of natural history for the cItizen science platform “Bürger Schaffen Wissen“ in Berlin Germany since 2014. In the interview, David provided insights in his work with citizen science projects, their roots and about possible developments of citizen science in the future.
Thanks to Maximilian Ueberham and the staff of the gis.business magazine for this great opportunity and the interesting article about Citizen Science.