Citizen Science as an Ecosystem of Engagement: Implications for Learning and Broadening Participation
Open accessAbstract
The bulk of research on citizen science participants is project centric, based on an assumption that volunteers experience a single project. Contrary to this assumption, survey responses (n = 3894) and digital trace data (n = 3649) from volunteers, who collectively engaged in 1126 unique projects, revealed that multiproject participation was the norm. Only 23% of volunteers were singletons (who participated in only one project). The remaining multiproject participants were split evenly between discipline specialists (39%) and discipline spanners (38% joined projects with different disciplinary topics) and unevenly between mode specialists (52%) and mode spanners (25% participated in online and offline projects). Public engagement was narrow: The multiproject participants were eight times more likely to be White and five times more likely to hold advanced degrees than the general population. We propose a volunteer-centric framework that explores how the dynamic accumulation of experiences in a project ecosystem can support broad learning objectives and inclusive citizen science.
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The target audience of classical citizen science games focuses on users with prior interest in science, which amplifies demographic skew in citizen science projects.
“Hence, their target audience focuses on users with prior interest in science15, which eventually amplifies the demographic skew observed in citizen science projects19.”
From Improving microbial phylogeny with citizen science within a mass-market video game (2025) · cites this paper as [19]
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A framework for contextualizing social‐ecological biases in contributory science data
Carlen, E. J., Estien, C. O., Caspi, T., Perkins, D., Goldstein, B. R., Kreling, S. E. S., Hentati, Y., Williams, T. D., Stanton, L. A., Des Roches, S., et al. (2024) · People and Nature · doi:10.1002/pan3.10592 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
Self-citationImproving microbial phylogeny with citizen science within a mass-market video game
Sarrazin-Gendron, R., Ghasemloo Gheidari, P., Butyaev, A., Keding, T., Cai, E., Zheng, J., Mutalova, R., Mounthanyvong, J., Zhu, Y., Nazarova, E., et al. (2025) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/s41587-024-02175-6 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
- Authors
- Allf, B. C., Cooper, C. B., Larson, L. R., Dunn, R. R., Futch, S. E., Sharova, M., & CAVALIER, D.
- Affiliations
- Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources , Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
- North Carolina State University (US)
- Department of Applied Ecology , Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
- The Nature Conservancy (US)
- American Geophysical Union (US)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Venue
- BioScience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2022-06-22
- Volume
- 72
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 651-663
- ISSN
- 0006-3568 (ISSN-L)
- 1525-3244
- PMC
- PMC9236874
- OpenAlex
- W4226424160
- Cited by
- 74
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 47.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- BioScience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development › Geographic Information Systems Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Museology › Museums and Cultural Heritage
- Keywords
- citizen science, volunteer engagement, widening participation, digital traces, volunteer demographics, learning outcomes
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