Crowd science : it is not just a matter of time (or funding)

The last years, citizen science, or crowd science, has increased tremendously, both in number of projects, and number of participants. Most literature on crowd science focuses on its advantages, for both scientists, and the participating citizens. The challenges of crowd science come mainly from limited organizational capacity of some of these projects. As a result of this line of reasoning, the main issue becomes, how we can facilitate citizen science, and help it expand to more projects, and involve more (types of) participants. My aim in this discussion note is to make two points: first, that, most recent work on citizen science fails to elaborate on the new types of relationships, practices and interactions that are facilitated by information and communication technologies, when compared to traditional volunteer science. The second point is that there are pronounced disciplinary differences among citizen science projects, something that, again, is generally being missed in much recent work. Missing these points can lead us to imagine that it’s only a matter of time (and of course funding) before all sciences catch up with citizen science. Such a line of thought can result in investing resources (money, time, effort) in projects and infrastructures that are doomed to fail, because of their topic. I conclude by offering some thoughts on a research agenda.