So-called citizen science has become a significant force in several scholarly disciplines. The phenomenon can be found in both the natural and the social sciences, according to the largest systematic analysis to date on the topic, the results of which are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. 'We see that in particular researchers in the natural sciences have collected and classified data with the help of interested volunteers. In the social sciences, there has been a focus on inviting select parts of the public to find out the effects of science on people's everyday lives. This may for example concern environment problems and risks,' says Christopher Kullenberg, researcher in the field of theory of science.

To make the study as broad as possible, the analysis included 2 568 scientific articles based on citizen science. A feat that turned out to be quite a challenge, since researchers in different disciplines have referred to citizen science in many different ways.

'Since the mid-1990s, it has usually been called "citizen science". But the terms "participatory science", "crowd science", "civic science" and even "street science" are also frequently used,' says Dick Kasperowski, assistant professor of theory of science.

All these concepts imply active participation by the public in some part of the research process.

'What's exciting about citizen science is that it enables non-researchers to make important contributions to science. If you think about it, it sounds impossible. After all, don't you need years of training and experience to do that?' says Kullenberg. 

The fields of biology and ecology have a long tradition of citizen science. Researchers have for example relied on the public's ability to observe and classify animals and plant species for over 100 years. This has clearly been very successful and enormous amounts of data have been collected, for example to identify the migration patterns of birds and other animals. Such studies are important in order to understand the ongoing changes in the climate. Citizen science has recently also gone digital. For example, astronomy researchers have benefitted greatly from having regular citizens classify uncountable pictures of galaxies.