How and When to Involve Crowds in Scientific Research
Additional resources (selection)
The book includes a range of frameworks and tools to guide you in determining when and how to involve crowds in scientific research.
On this page, we highlight a few additional resources that help organizers design crowd science projects, including technical tools to facilitate common functions and features. While not an exhaustive list, these resources are intended to serve as examples and get you started in your exploration of various options.
General guides on how to run crowd/citizen science projects
- EU Citizen Science. Platform for knowledge, tools, and trainings for crowd and citizen science.
- U.S. Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit. Tips on project planning (e.g., scoping the problem, designing the project, building a community, managing data, sustaining and improving the project).
- AAPS Resource Center on various CS topics.
- Introduction to Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing. Online course providing background and practical guidance on planning CS projects.
- SciStarter Tools. Catalogue of technical tools to engage citizens in a broad range of activities.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but we appreciate suggestions for important resources to add. Please email us!
Tools and platforms that crowd members or organizers can use for specific stages of the research process (related to chapters 4-12 of the book)
Developing and selecting research questions
- Google Scholar. Search for relevant prior literature.
- SciSpace. Find relevant literature, do automatic summaries.
- Allourideas. Website to ask crowds to compare and rank different options.
Raising funding
- Experiment.com. Platform to crowdfunding research projects across range of fields.
- Molecule.xyz. Platform to crowdfund larger projects using tokens.
Developing methods and materials
- Kaggle. Platform to crowdsource algorithms or other data-related tools using contests.
- SciStarter. Database of (low cost) materials and methods for citizen science projects, by field:
Collecting data
- Inaturalist. Platform for projects involving environmental monitoring.
- CitSci platform. Platform to build projects involving data collection.
- Spotteron. Mobile apps for data collection (including maps).
- Comparison of CS platforms. Systematic comparison of leading platforms, especially for data collection.
- CS Logger. Create data collection projects in the form of a smartphone App.
Processing and analyzing data
- Zooniverse project builder. Build projects that involve classifications.
- CS Project Builder: Create and run data-analysis projects.
- Spotteron. Modules for data processing and analysis, visualizations.
- BOINC. Platform to create and promote projects involving volunteer computing.
Solving problems
- Wazokucrowd. Organize problem-solving contests.
- One Giant Lab. Organize online collaborations for problem solving.
Writing the paper
- Google Docs. Tool to collaborate online on text documents or spreadsheets.
- ChatGPT. Tool to help create outlines of scientific articles, edit text.
Diffusing results
- WordPress. Platform to create websites and blogs.
- ChatGPT. Tool to create charts and infographics based on scientific data or results.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but we appreciate suggestions for important resources to add. Please email us!
Tools and platforms to address cross-cutting challenges (related to chapters 13-15 of the book)
Platforms to promote a project and recruit crowd members
- SciStarter.org. Largest catalogue of crowd/citizen science projects, covering U.S. and other countries.
- EU Citizen Science. Large catalogue of crowd/citizen projects, focusing on the EU.
- Zooniverse.org. Large existing crowd for projects involving image or video classifications.
- iNaturalist. Large existing crowd for projects involving data collection in nature.
- Österreich forscht. Platform for crowd/citizen science projects in Austria.
- mit:forschen!. Platform for crowd/citizen science projects in Germany.
Tools to facilitate coordination and communication between crowd members
- Trello. Software to manage projects and workflows.
- Slack. Tool to create communication channels for projects.
Tools to manage copyrights, scientific credit, data ethics
- Creative commons. Default licenses for data and project outputs.
- CRediT contributor roles. Taxonomy to acknowledge different types of contributions in research and discuss potential coauthorship.
- Data Ethics Toolkit. Resources on managing data ownership and ethics.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but we appreciate suggestions for important resources to add. Please email us!