This year Vilnius University is marking Citizen Science Month for the third year in a row. The VU Library newsletter "Mokslo atvirukas" raises an important question: what advantages and shortcomings of citizen science does the academic community see?
A study showed that of the 895 citizen science projects examined, as many as 75.3% had not published a single peer-reviewed publication, and on average a considerable amount of time passed before the first publication appeared. This raises an important question: does citizen science always deliver tangible scientific results?
However, this does not mean that citizen science is not worth attention. On the contrary. Citizen science projects collect data that professional researchers could not collect on their own, foster public trust in science and develop critical thinking. The VU Library urges researchers and institutions to look more actively for ways to make citizen science results more accessible and more valuable from a scientific point of view.
It is important that accessibility does not remain the concern of researchers alone. Institutions must also have a stake in it: publishers and universities should treat it as an important component of the impact of research activity, and funders should require that the results of projects financed with public funds are genuinely publicly accessible.
The full VU Library newsletter "Mokslo atvirukas" can be found on the VU Library page.