Criteria for Citizen Science – A source of community empowerment or a barrier?

Citizen science comes in many shapes and forms, and we use a variety of<br/>different terms to describe what we do. This sometimes causes confusion,<br/>both among researchers, but also when we interact with other citizen science<br/>stakeholders, e.g., funders, evaluators or collaboration partners. This confusion<br/>needs to change to a shared understanding, and there are opportunities to<br/>more clearly delineate what citizen science is, e.g., through use of vignettes<br/>or criteria. The ECSA Working Group on citizen science Networks has, over<br/>the last 3 years, co-created transparent, impartial criteria with citizen science<br/>researchers, practitioners and citizen scientists that can help decide if a project<br/>should be listed as citizen science on online platforms. If implemented, criteria<br/>could facilitate a system change in how citizen science networks collaborate,<br/>enabling citizen science project listings across platforms. The criteria could<br/>also be useful for funding bodies, researchers and other citizen science<br/>stakeholders.<br/>The goal of this workshop is to familiarise participants with the criteria and<br/>discuss how and where citizen science criteria might be useful in their work,<br/>where criteria might be barriers and how to overcome such challenges.<br/>In this workshop, we invite researchers, practitioners and other citizen science<br/>stakeholders to share their experiences with and reflections on criteria for<br/>citizen science and discuss how criteria can be most beneficial for all involved,<br/>especially when applied to create shared understandings between researchers<br/>and other stakeholders in citizen science projects.<br/><br/>After a brief introduction to the developed criteria, participants are invited to join discussions in several ways:<br/>• First through a fishbowl approach, where they share their own experiences,<br/>case studies, and reflections on where and how criteria can most usefully be<br/>applied (20 min.)<br/>• Secondly, through a mind mapping exercise of important topics, raised in the<br/>fishbowl or through new reflections (15 min.)<br/>• And finally, through World Café discussions based on chosen most important<br/>topics from the mindmapping (35 min.)