Citizen Science Platforms & Organizations
On this page, you'll find a list of citizen science platforms and organizations.
Citizen Science (.gov)
Link: Citizen Science
Summary: Government portal where individuals can get involved with federally funded science projects or where federal scientists can list their projects to get citizen science help.
About: “CitizenScience.gov is an official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government. The site provides a portal to three key components: a catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist federal practitioners with designing and maintaining their projects, and a gateway to a community of hundreds of citizen science practitioners and coordinators across government as called for in the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2016 (15 USC 3724). You can learn more about the activities of the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science in this two-page overview document.”
SciStarter
Link: SciStarter
Summary: SciStarter is a platform that aggregates citizen science projects from multiple sites, with a search interface that helps users find projects in their geographic area and area of interest.
About: “SciStarter is a globally acclaimed, online citizen science hub where more than 3,000 projects, searchable by location, topic, age level, etc, have been registered by individual project leaders or imported through partnerships with federal governments, NGOs, and universities. As a research affiliate of NCSU and ASU, and a popular citizen science portal, SciStarter hosts an active community of close to 100,000 registered citizen scientists and millions of additional site visitors. Hundreds of citizen science projects use SciStarter's NSF-supported APIs to help citizen scientists earn credit for their participation in their SciStarter dashboard, across projects and platforms. These features enable SciStarter's partners (libraries, schools, museums, Girl Scouts and more) to catalyze customized citizen science pathways and track and support the progress of their communities through SciStarter. SciStarter also supports researchers in managing projects, including best practices for engaging participant partners.”
Zooniverse
Link: Zooniverse
About: “The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers — more than a million people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. Our goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, otherwise. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries, datasets useful to the wider research community, and many publications.”
NASA Citizen Science Projects
Link: NASA
Summary: On this website, NASA has a list of projects that non-NASA scientists can get involved with, including non-scientists and non-experts. The website is an aggregate of NASA affiliated projects across disciplines and from different NASA labs and research groups across the country.
AGU’s Thriving Earth Exchange
Link: AGU
About: “AGU’s Thriving Earth Exchange program connects communities with scientists and supports them as they work together to tackle local challenges related to natural hazards, natural resources, and climate change.” “Thriving Earth Exchange strengthens and enhances collaboration among communities, scientists, and partner organizations so that all communities can build healthy, resilient, thriving, just, and ecologically responsible futures.”
UC Davis Center for Community & Citizen Science
Link: UC Davis
About: “Based on a foundation of research excellence, the Center helps scientists, communities, and citizens collaborate on science to address environmental problems as a part of civic life.”
