Citizen science at universities: Trends, guidelines and recommendations

Citizen science is experiencing an upsurge of interest. In a paper published today, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) analyses trends in citizen science, formulates actionable guidelines for scientists and gives recommendations for universities, policymakers and funders.

What is citizen science? While amateur scientists have contributed to science for centuries, over the past decades this involvement has grown and evolved in a variety of ways. Nowadays, citizen science projects can be grassroots community initiatives with little or no involvement of academic researchers or university-based projects managed by professional scientists.The LERU paper focuses on the latter. More...