The Promise of Community Citizen Science

Citizen science is public participation in research and scientific endeavors. Different models are proliferating across various disciplines. Citizens volunteer as data collectors in science projects, collaborate with scientific experts on research design, and actively lead and carry out research. The last form of citizen science, in which citizens exert a high degree of control and ownership over scientific activities, tends to be action-oriented, with research conducted to support interventional activities or policy change. We call this form community citizen science, and it can be of particular importance to those working at the nexus of science and decisionmaking. This Perspective examines the transformative potential of community citizen science for communities, science, and decisionmaking. The Perspective is based on our experiences working in collaboration with community groups, extensive readings of the scientific literature, and numerous interviews with leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of citizen science and participatory research. It is intended to be a brief, high-level treatment; future publications will be more detailed about findings from the literature and interviews.

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