C*Sci 2023 and the new name of the (US) Citizen Science Association

At the end of May, the Citizen Science Association (CSA) celebrated its 10th year anniversary in its conference – C*Sci 2023, held at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. The conference (22-26 May) provided the opportunity to meet face-to-face colleagues in the area of citizen science, which I haven’t had a chance to talk and meet with since the conference in March 2019 (in Raleigh, NC). I have participated, to some extent, in the online conferences in 2021 and 2022. Yet, there is no replacement for sitting down and talking with people, hearing the discussion in panels, during breaks, and looking at the posters during the sessions in which a lot of early career researchers are presenting their work. The event ended with a celebration of the first decade of the association, and the reveal of its suggested new name: The Association for the Advancement of Participatory Sciences. I think that it’s rather a good name, which matches the term used in Latin America, and in France (Sciences Participatives). It also matches the UNESCO language of “participatory and citizen science” in the Recommendation on Open Science. So I think that it’s a good solution to the naming challenges that the CSA faced although the term always reminds me of the 1968 poster …

I left the conference disheartened about the state of citizen science in the USA – when compared to the situation in Europe: the conference was smaller – about 300 compared to the 500 that participated in the last ECSA conference. Of course, as part of mainstreaming citizen science is now integrated into disciplinary conferences such as ESA or AGU, but even so, it felt like different crowds and areas that are showing up in ECSA activities are missing (e.g. the growing area of health). In addition, there is confusion and splintering over the terminology of activities, with a palpable sense that some people are careful about voicing their views. There was also a sense of lack of growth in terms of disciplines, institutional adoption of citizen science, or strengthening of funding and mainstreaming of citizen science.

I don’t want to make it all subdued – I made new connections, had interesting conversations, and linked up with old and new friends. There were a lot of delightful moments, but overall, the atmosphere was more reflective than buoyant – but that might be my mood (and the result of intensive engagement with the site visit at Universita San Raffaelle in Milan and the Community Science Exchange board meeting just before the conference)!

Although I was well aware of the high level of emotions and debate around the “citizen” in citizen science with the USA community, it was invaluable to have the conversations during the conference as well as the editorial board meeting of the Community Science Exchange, and talking with my colleagues on the editorial board of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CS:TP). I learned a lot and it made me think and reflect about the issues of terminology, naming, and impact on the community of practice and interest that the CSA represents. This blog post is the result of this thinking.

In a way this very long blog is my response to a question that I’ve been asking myself for the past five years: why do I find the terminology discussion counterproductive? As it will become clear, I have a specific issue with the suggestion about using “community science” as an umbrella term, but although I’m touching on that, I go beyond that specific term, and I just want to get it “out of my system” (and maybe get responses so I can develop my understanding).

[update 18/6: several people, including Pietro Michelucci, pointed to the problem with the question – “I struggle to reconcile the irony that in answering the question… you seem to be directly engaging that discourse yourself.” The answer is that there are two meanings to “discussion”. I do find the academic exchange of ideas actually productive and important, to clarify what we mean, what we want to do, and how we want to progress. It’s really important and it is not counterproductive. The second meaning is the way that people are in the discussion with splintering terminologies, putting all the emphasis on the field name as a magic bullet that will solve the problem, etc. I find that part counterproductive, as you see below]

From my start of engagement with participatory mapping and citizen science, I endorsed a pluralist position that accepts as many activities as possible under the umbrella, as this helps secure funding, recognition, and resources for all these activities (that’s my motivation behind the characteristics of citizen science). A lot of people are not aware, but if you look through the field of participatory mapping, for example in this review, you’ll notice that in this field, too, it’s possible to recognise the contributory-collaborative-co-created-collegial spectrum in citizen science. So I needed to think “What is my problem with what may seem as ensuring that the field is more inclusive?“. This blog is my answer to myself…

I’ll be using citizen science in the umbrella sense of the term, instead of writing citizen/community/participatory science every time it can be used interchangeably.

I’m starting by describing my positionality regarding the issues of how to be inclusive and how terminology relate to it; next, I’m comparing the CSA and the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), and the general situation in Europe – with which I’m highly familiar. With these in place, I start by pointing to some points about the “citizen” in citizen science that I don’t see in the USA debate. I then explore the (large) opportunity costs that the CSA is paying and will continue to pay for the terminology debate. I then go on to some of the risks (from my point of view) of the USA debate. Especially, what seems to me to be “performative inclusiveness” which is actually harming the potential of achieving the goals that the well-meaning activists are pushing for.

I am likely misinterpreting and misunderstanding the issues, so I’m not trying in this post to give recommendations or say anything about what the USA community should do, as it is not my business to do so. I would welcome comments and feedback, to help me to understand the issues more. To make things slightly more navigable, I’m putting [Argument x] next to each point that I’m raising, and which I don’t feel are completely addressed so far.

Positionality

I’m coming to this analysis as someone who was in the 2012 meeting that led to the creation of the CSA, was on the first board of the CSA and continued to engage with the CSA through the conference and especially in supporting its journal (CSTP) as a member of the editorial board, and after an explicit request from the two last Editors in Chief, I’m acting as an Associate Editor in Chief. I was also a member of the conference committee for some of the conferences. Yet, I’m not working in the USA and I only know of USA issues through conferences, publications, discussions etc. I have not engaged enough on the CSA community platform, but I do keep in touch with some of the working groups from time to time.

With ECSA, I am much more engaged – I was involved in the discussion that led to its launch in 2012-2013, been involved in it from the start. As the project lead of the “Doing it Together Science” (DITOs) project, I included ECSA and that brought in very significant start-up funding for the organisation. I was on the board and co-vice chair for a period of time. I was regularly invited and participated in the conference committee, including co-chairing the ECSA conference from our kitchen during a Covid-19 lockdown.

I’m aware that I’m doing my analysis from what is now a privileged position, although throughout my career I have been working extensively with and in communities through community science and citizen science (which is why I find the current misuse of the term “community science” troubling). The use of the term “citizen science” helped me to secure funding – the “extreme citizen science” projects would not have been funded, in all likelihood, if they were called “radical community mapping”, which is just as valid a description.

Yet, I’m not tied to “citizen science” (see below – I used the slide below in many of my talks). It almost suggests that a new terminology will come in the 2020s. I’ll explain later why I think that “citizen science” is hugely helpful, but if things change, I’ll change with them.

I’m also coming to this discussion with a strong notion that activism is only relevant when it comes with pragmatism and realism about resources. When you don’t have resources, you can dream and advocate inclusion and outreach, but once you’ve secured significant resources, you can achieve some of your goals.

I also believe in “never underestimate how unimportant you are” – the activities of citizen science are, still, marginal and underfunded, with a fair amount of resistance from mainstream scientists. When the biggest project anywhere reaches about 1.5% of the population when studies such as Eurobarometer 516 tell you that the potential is closer to 12% (or 25% if you’re optimistic), you know that there is a long way to go. So as I see it, without being established and embedded in scientific practice and scientific institutions – which will release resources, the capacity of citizen science to achieve inclusion at scale is very limited.

I experienced this in many cases – for example, during one of the citizen cyberscience conferences that I run at UCL, I was personally criticised on social media for not investing in a creche and not providing travel grants, because “How come a rich institution like UCL cannot support this to allow inclusiveness”. The reality was that the conference relied on zero support from the institution, and the conference fee was kept to a minimum to make it inclusive to some, but as a result, there was no money to support things like a creche or travel grants. The institution didn’t release any resources (apart from space). Life is full of these tradeoffs.

Europe and USA

It will be highly misleading to assume that the European situation is a panacea – far from it. Even when we think about the established institutions that are embedding citizen science into their institutional practices, we are not talking about well-funded, large centres with large support teams. At best, we’re talking about two funded positions, small grants, and a few champions at the senior management level. Yet, the policy area around this is very good – The European Union research programme (Horizon Europe) is supporting citizen science, for example, with 4 years, €6m funding to maintain and platform and support network. ECSA is having a team of sixteen people – many part-time, but it is currently having a period of stability and people who are organising European projects are reaching out to it to join projects. The European top elite science funder (The European Research Council) dedicated an event in 2022 to citizen science and at the governmental policy level, a mutual learning exercise that accelerated the adoption of pro-citizen science policies by national research funders and ministries just completed. There are multiple projects with universities and university libraries that support the adoption of citizen science. That’s a good start, and we have this secured until around 2029 when the funding of Horizon Europe will end.

In the USA, the CSA team remains very modest, and I continued to hear about the National Science Foundation’s informal science programme as a major source of funding, instead of becoming mainstream across all funding programmes. It was a delight to hear about the growth of funding from NASA, but it didn’t feel like the mainstreaming that happen in Europe – partial and limited as it is – happened in the USA.

The citizen in citizen science

I completely “get” the issue that if you approach people who are non-citizens in the formal sense of holding a passport/identity card it can be problematic if you tell them to join a citizen science activity. Yet, I find some of the arguments that I heard from the USA community problematic and simplistic.

First and foremost “citizen science” is an umbrella term for a field of practice, not a term that should be used in every single activity that is included in the field [Argument 1]. I’ve been using the mapping below for about 8-9 years – notice how community science is getting a nice space inside, mostly to ensure that as the pie of citizen science grows, it will grow, too.

I’m not talking about a trickle-down theory here, but if you check what happens when the (Horizon Europe) pie grows, you see how it supports more people from new locations.

The main issue here is that if we look at our nearest fields of scientific activity – science communication and public engagement (and maybe widening participation, too) – they don’t go out and advertise to people “come to a public engagement activity” but “come to a pint of science event”. You don’t go to a deprived school and say “I’m here from the widening participation team because you are poor”. Conflating the professional name with the terminology that you’re using to reach out is not a good idea in any field, so why does citizen science act differently?

A second point is about a sense of dishonesty about who is participating. We have a lot of evidence that the people who are participating are highly educated (e.g. overrepresentation of people with PhDs), well off, and from majority groups in society. Most of our participants (maybe 99%?) are citizens in the formal sense [Argument 2]. “Citizen science” can be a reminder to all of those involved (including practitioners who need to pay attention to inclusion) who are the current participants. This is also where my “inclusion is constraints by your resources” come in. In terms of participants, we’re in a situation of abundance: there is no contradiction between having minority participants who require a lot of attention and outreach, and highly educated and well-off people, who are easy to recruit, on the same project. Having both is what is needed – it’s not a trade-off. Yet, the resources for coordinators and for running a project are limited. There is no way around the fact that including minority groups is more expensive per participant. So if you don’t have resources for mass inclusion, and potentially crowdfunding from the well-off people, you can’t have the resources for outreach at scale [Argument 3]. If you take your limited resources and go after inclusion without figuring out how to demonstrate the scale and scientific impact of the field, you will be undermining the funding, eventually.

Third, I feel that there is a very strong sense that “citizen” is a noun. In many notions, it is a verb – here are examples from the USA: How to Citizen by Baratunde Thurston, or The Art of Citizenry by Manpreet Kaur Kalra which is specifically about decolonising. I have also seen Citizen journalism by undocumented people. Check out also this recent book “Citizens” (it is written from a European perspective). So why it became such a one-dimensional term with the community of practitioners is unclear [Argument 4].

Finally, and that is a concern that I’m noticing as I talk about citizen science in different institutions, is the problem of putting co-created and inclusive citizen science on a pedestal. For a very obvious reason, if I’m talking with someone who is doing their first citizen science project as a scientist, I would recommend a contributory, crowdsourcing-style project with outreach to people who are easy to reach. The reason? most scientists will not have access to the skills and support to carry out the highly complex and delicate work of co-created projects with a marginalised group. They are fairly likely to fail, disappoint themselves, and the community, and cause harm to the growth of citizen science (“We’ve tried it, and it’s been a disaster”). For me, this field must celebrate the inclusion of well-off and educated people and not paint it as a problem [Argument 5].

Opportunity Costs

With these core points in mind, I’m trying to make sense of the difference between ECSA and CSA, since the CSA had an “advantage”. For example, the citizen science and crowdsourcing act of 2016 is the first law anywhere to support citizen science, but today, the policy support is much stronger for ECSA. So what happened? It is noticeable that the discussion and unease about the naming are going deep in the USA – this was clear in 2009 in the PPSR report, or in the discussion that led to the “terminology matter” paper (one of the best moments in the conference was to catch up with M.V. Eitzel). The result of this debate are very high opportunity costs. This is a term in economics that points to something that the time and effort that is dedicated to a task could be spent on. So I am speculating the following.

First, the community of practice, and the CSA board, dedicate and are dedicating a very significant amount of time to a debate and discussion of terminology. This is time that is lost from growing the field, lobbying funders, and generally stabilising the field [Argument 6].

Second, small fields tend to forget that they are marginalised by themselves in terms of their position, and argue as if it matters hugely. Earlier in my career, I could see it in arguments about the difference between “Participatory Geographical Information Systems” and “Public Participation Geographical Information Systems” with lots of ink spilt on differentiating and defining PGIS and PPGIS. Then came the term “Volunteered Geographic Information” (VGI) which caused more ink floods. The uncertainty that this creates is confusing new researchers that are entering the area (MSc and PhD students) and they go to safer and more stable fields [Argument 7]. I benefited from publishing papers on these divisions, but the field could have grown faster if it had a common name and goal.

There are also opportunity costs in people writing “community science (also known as citizen science)” or in longer forms of papers that are arguing for different naming. Just as above, it sends a negative message to people who are not involved in the field [Argument 8]. Space and energy will be taken by people who would want to use terms like “community science” and people who feel (like me) that it’s an act of appropriation and colonisation of someone’s else term (See Caren Cooper et al. 2021 paper). This energy is not helpful for the growth of the field, of course.

Finally, think, for a moment, of the small recognition capital that the CSA accumulated in the past decade. It will be now “(formally the citizen science association)” for a while, and it might mean starting again in some areas [Argument 9]. On this argument, you can see that on the other hand, considering the limited recognition of citizen science in the scientific community and in the public at large, maybe the new name will help in rapid recognition and growth. In Europe, we have a very strong recognition of ECSA (e.g. through the 10 principles) and the costs of losing recognition will be very high.

Risks

While I don’t know the full reasons why, what the empirical evidence shows is that the term “citizen science” worked fantastically well with policy-makers [Argument 10]. From a very practical point of view of trying to get support and resources to a small field so it is possible to invest in inclusion and outreach, It’s very clear that the term works. It appears in hundreds of policy documents, and it is accepted by policy-makers from either left or right persuasions. During the Mutual-Learning Exercise, we’ve seen support for citizen science from governments that are strongly right-wing to governments that are left-wing. The UNESCO recommendations are accepted by 191 governments, again, across the spectrum of political views. Since I’ve been following OpenStreetMap in Russia and citizen science in China, I know that the assumptions about democratising science through citizen science are incorrect. Citizen science can be supported by right-wing governments as an act of national identity, individualism, and self-reliance as much as it can support claims of national identity and links to the land, and indigenous rights. Because it works with different governments and funders, it will open up opportunities to reach and support marginal groups through the general funding that it creates. Creating confusion or moving away from the term might not work as well as this tried and tested term – see also Susanne Hecker’s paper to see the range of conceptualisation in policy documents.

We see in London how much local government understand and accepts the term – but also in Beirut and Nairobi. Maybe other terms will work as well, but if you have a term that empirically works well, why look for another?

The process of policy recognition – either inside a governmental authority (e.g. the European Environment Agency or the UK Department of Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs) is a long, complex and delicate process. From the current experience of the working group with the UNESCO recommendation, I can confirm that you need to stay vigilant and active, and any advancement can slip back very easily. Therefore, the wide range of efforts to embed “citizen science” in policy documents should not be assumed that it can be updated or changed easily [Argument 11]. In a sense, even if you don’t like the term, you got to stick with it for the political and resource gains.

Linked to the above, I am willing to guess that the debate over terminology chills university managers from investment. I’ve seen it in several meetings and interactions in my career – a dean or someone at such a level hears a term and one of the things they do is check it on a search engine like Scopus in terms of citations. Look where “citizen science” is now because of the splintering over names – you can see that it stopped growing in 2022. Would you create a new academic position if you see that the “peak” is over? In fact, it’s not, it’s just that some people decided to start a terminology war – but let’s wait until things are sorted and then recruit. Same about starting a new degree programme, or a course [Argument 12]. This is where “remember how unimportant you are” comes in. Most of the academic community doesn’t know and doesn’t care about the internal debate, but you need to notice what is the impact of their reading of your actions. Unity and coherence usually lead to resource allocation, confusion and argument do the opposite.

The same is true for the effort of building recognition for the journal “Citizen Science: Theory and Practice” [Argument 13]. Just at the moment when it is achieving “impact recognition” the suggestion to change the name will mean throwing away this long, multi-year effort. Again, the “how unimportant you are” argument is relevant here. As a marginal, emerging field, citizen science needs all the recognition that it can get, such as these indexes. In many countries around the world, academics are expected to submit only to journals with higher citation and impact records. It is impossible to grow a field if no new academic positions are created for it and there is no signal to the wider scientific community about the importance of it.

As with Argument 5 above (about the issue of making co-created and inclusionary projects the gold standard), there is a risk in thinking that co-creation and inclusion are everything. For example, the impact at a continental scale (e.g. Monarch Butterfly, eBird) is critical for science and decision-making. More people and a wider impact can only be achieved by keeping all the forms of citizen science active. With appropriate resources, you can work with both highly exclusive men groups who are competitive and maybe even bigoted, while running at the same time an inclusive activity and benefit from the data and science that emerges from both [Argument 14].

Performative inclusivity

While I am very familiar with the (environmental) justice literature (see this chapter), and the very long emphasise that language is having a critical role in shaping the world and opening up opportunities for discourse, I’ve also learned over the years to be pragmatic and goal-oriented instead of being dogmatic. As my late father used to say “You can’t buy things in the grocery store with principles”. I was also educated in one of my community science projects by the members of the community. The funding for the project explicitly mentioned environmental justice, but community members didn’t want to use the term. They understood, better than me, that in terms of achieving the political outcomes that the community wanted, there was no advantage in using the term – so they’ve used other terms.

It is, therefore, appropriate to ask – is the name change means a reality that is more inclusive, or is it only at a performative level [Argument 15]? The reason that I’m asking this is that at around the same time that the CSA changed its name, the (only) infrastructure for active, impactful community science in the USA collapsed. If inclusion and outreach are so central to this community, how come it was left without support? (and yes, I’m very sorry to see the demise of Public Lab).

There is a good reason why including citizens and focusing on wide inclusion makes it more likely to be able to garner the additional resources that are needed for the expensive and challenging deeper engagement. Changing the name is the easy part and not necessarily the most important. The reason to make these claims is that the “Extreme Citizen Science” group have now completed a long and very expensive effort of engaging 20 communities in remote and difficult places. As I’ve said in a talk at the top European science funder event – what we have demonstrated is that it is possible to co-create scientific projects with any community. Yes, it’s expensive and difficult, and taxing emotionally and physically. But it is possible. Therefore, it is possible to do it with any community if there is a will. For me, there are two points here – without the top science funding, we wouldn’t be able to do this inclusiveness. Secondly, we’ve done it not with performative inclusiveness but as action research with outcomes that are agreed with the communities that we worked with. I regularly give long explanations about the “extreme” because it’s problematic and I am not comfortable with it. However, if anything, this is a demonstration that the term citizen science is an enabler of inclusiveness.

This is also where I go back to my approach to ensure plurality. I want to see a field that is providing support and funding to personal science by rare disease patients, the highly skilled DIY Bio, the “do science while asleep” that volunteer computing does, and the community science that addresses burning injustices, as well as community science that is about ensuring the quality of the local river. Any umbrella term needs to capture all of these and I don’t completely see an effort to remain plural [Argument 16]. For example, community science will fail with some of those, while participatory science will be OK.

Summary

So I have here 16 arguments that are pointing to the risks and complications that are created by terminology argument. I can see the counterarguments on some of them, but not for all. Here they are summarised:

1. it’s a name for a field, not an activity
2. most participants are citizens
3. scale will give resources for inclusion
4. citizen is a verb, not a noun
5. co-created and inclusive practice should not become the gold standard
6. attention of the community is wasted on arguments over terminology instead of strengthening the field
7. splitting the field and terminology is wasting resources and attention
8. changing the name complicates things as people dedicate papers and space in papers to explain their position
9. changing the name makes you lose accumulated recognition
10. citizen science is working well with policy makers
11. policy recognition is a long, delicate, and complex process
12. changing terminology will have negative impacts on internal organisation attention, awareness, and investment
13. the process of gaining academic recognition is slow and complex and it will be put to waste (e.g. with CSTP)
14. forgetting that non-inclusive projects are valuable is a mistake
15. is the name change goes beyond performative inclusiveness?
16. pluralism in terms of activities is central to this field

This is a very long post. As I said from the start, I am writing this to try and organise my thoughts and ideas and noticing that I have many questions that are left unanswered with the things that I see on the mailing list and in papers.

I don’t think that all these arguments are strong and comprehensive. I also see that some might seem insensitive to excluded groups. Yet, as someone who has done (and hopefully will do) more work with such groups, my view is that only with a strongly funded citizen science that scientists value and support we can achieve the diversity and equity that people want to see in this field. I might be wrong, but this is my personal lesson from 25 years of academic work.

I guess that the CSA will go with a name change, and the USA community will continue to argue and invest effort in terminology. I very much hope that they will find a way to strengthen the field (whatever it is called) and help it to grow internationally. I only hope that this will not bring the whole field down.