TY - GEN
T1 - Free as in puppies
T2 - 2013 2nd ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2013
AU - Wiggins, Andrea
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Citizen science is a form of collaborative research engaging the public with professional scientists. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are a leading factor in the recent spread of this phenomenon. A common assumption is that money and ICT are the ideal solutions to issues of data quality and participant engagement. The reality is instead that resource limitations often require adopting suboptimal ICT, including tools that are "free as in puppies" with hidden costs from poor usability and lack of appropriate functionality. A comparative case study of three citizen science projects, eBird, The Great Sunflower Project, and Mountain Watch, found that projects with few ICT resources employed a broader range of strategies to address these issues than expected. The most practical and effective strategies integrated available ICT with other resources to open up new solutions and options for supporting citizen science outcomes in spite of resource limitations.
AB - Citizen science is a form of collaborative research engaging the public with professional scientists. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are a leading factor in the recent spread of this phenomenon. A common assumption is that money and ICT are the ideal solutions to issues of data quality and participant engagement. The reality is instead that resource limitations often require adopting suboptimal ICT, including tools that are "free as in puppies" with hidden costs from poor usability and lack of appropriate functionality. A comparative case study of three citizen science projects, eBird, The Great Sunflower Project, and Mountain Watch, found that projects with few ICT resources employed a broader range of strategies to address these issues than expected. The most practical and effective strategies integrated available ICT with other resources to open up new solutions and options for supporting citizen science outcomes in spite of resource limitations.
KW - Case study
KW - Citizen science
KW - Data quality
KW - Distributed work
KW - Scientific collaboration
KW - Technology-mediated participation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84874928440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84874928440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2441776.2441942
DO - 10.1145/2441776.2441942
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84874928440
SN - 9781450313315
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW
SP - 1469
EP - 1480
BT - CSCW 2013 - Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Y2 - 23 February 2013 through 27 February 2013
ER -