Held on the 1st-3rd of February 2018 in Salzburg
The fourth Austrian Citizen Science Conference consisted of two days with presentations and poster sessions (1st and 2nd of February) and one action day (3rd of February).
As featured in the program, the conference was structured into many parallel presentations and workshops, giving participants a huge range of choices according to their interests. Yet, with so many possible choices it was difficult for participants to decide between the various presentations and workshops. Everything seemed equally interesting, and many participants were afraid to “miss out” on something.
The conference began with a capturing keynote by Prof. Helmut Jungwirth, an Austrian professor for science communication. With the title “Über Wissenschaft darf nicht gelacht werden, oder doch? (Is science but a serious, dry affair, or can it also be fun? )“, he presented ways to make science understandable for everyone through the “fun factor”. Generally, children in young age are fascinated to explore and try new things, and quite a few are interested in science and scientific experiments. But at some stage in their education, often in their high school days, science suddenly becomes something serious and difficult. and an “obsession with seriousness and the learning of dry facts” lead to a loss of interest and motivation, and change science into something apparently too difficult and inaccessible for many people. Referring to successful examples of projects such as Brain Game, where six science students are pitched against six scientists in a scientific contest, or the Ig-Nobel prize, Prof. Jungwirth demonstrated the importance of making science fun so that everybody can take part in it. CS would be an ideal way to make science accessible for everyone.
I have selected 3 main topics, a workshop and the after conference programs in this article.
CS and peer-review publication — Mission Impossible?
There were 7 presentations, each from different projects in this section. The main challenges in using the data citizens have collected for professional research and publishing them, were the following.
1. Mistrust of the data citizens have collected
2. The trade-off between education and science
3. Trans-disciplinary research is generally difficult to publish
4. The necessity of long-term projects
For 1, there are still many scientists who are sceptical of CS, as they doubt the accuracy of the data citizens have collected. Many of the projects evaluated these data and concluded: with the proper training (of participants) such data are as trustworthy as the data collected by scientists. One example is the Geo-Wiki project conducted by the centre for earth observation, where citizens engage in environmental monitoring to track changes of the environment. Citizens had strong points and week points, but at the task of identifying a location (one of the strong points), citizens did as well as scientists, even with cases where locations identified by citizens were more accurate. Feedback and correction from scientists as well as communication among the participants were important. Another example is the honey bee research in the EU in which more than 14,000 beekeepers took part. Beekeepers were asked to monitor the pollen on the bees with a very simple method: only by colour. The result, which showed that bees on a varied diet were healthier, matched other research findings by professional institutions. All projects stressed the importance of proper training of participants as well as the project-design in the initial stage in order to ensure data quality.
As for 2, the more focus is put on increasing the size of a group of citizens the lower the accuracy of the data collected. Another point is the often debated trade-off between citizen education and scientific quality of the project. Again project-design is of importance as to make clear from the beginning where to put the main focus of the project.
The main problem in point 3 is how to refer to the contribution of citizens, when publishing their data. First one needs to get the consent of every individual member included in the project, then there is the problem of proper reference, which means how to integrate the citizens’ contribution in the publications. There has been an attempt to create a “chain anonymous” where only the number of participants is mentioned, but not their names. This was, however, rejected by the reviewer since it invalidates the rules of co-authorship.
Long-term participation of citizens (point 4) is essential for relevant monitoring and also for developing a well-working structure as a role model for future projects. Consequently, encouraging citizens to remain engaged for longer periods is of importance.
CS and the media. What is the best way to reach the citizens?
With the event of digitalization (internet and technical innovations) journalists have lost their function as “the intermediators between scientists and citizens. These days scientists have the possibility to communicate directly with the public via internet. In fact, this is not merely a possibility, but it has become a must for scientists (especially scientists who want to work with citizens) to make themselves and their research visible in the vast sea of information. To attract the attention of the highly entertained modern citizens, the “how” to present ones’ research is paramount. Attractive photos, video-clips are important, and one also has to be good at telling an exciting story.
There are many mediums a scientist can use, starting with the blog ( Austria is a great “Blog country”). The scientific blog is an alternative way of publication, taking the open access idea of CS into account. A good blog (or a successful blog in the modern society) has to be catchy and attractive with the right text-picture ratio and the text length, and can be viewed not only on computer but also on smartphone screens. Facebook, Youtube and Instagram Stories are also effective mediums, which will gain presence in the future. Another interesting development are Live-Streams, which have the benefit of being easy, authentic and especially suitable for events. Podcast is also making progress, convenient in situations where you cannot watch a video, for example while driving, on the train, jogging etc. There even is a media specialized for CS, SPOTTERON.
Winning our next generation for science — CS projects in cooperation with schools.
Data quality is one of the biggest concerns, but all projects which evaluated the data collected by pupils showed that there were no significant differences compared to the data collected by scientists. Among these examples are student CS projects in aquatic biochemistry, organized by the Wasser Cluster Lunz, a non-profit research centre in partnership with the University of Vienna, the Danube University Krems, and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU Vienna), or a monitoring project of the behaviour of birds organized by the team of Dr. Didone Frigerio from the university of Vienna. The main participants in the latter projects where elementary school children.
Communication and cooperation with the students was fundamental for the success of the project. Projects where scientists worked directly with the students showed the best results both in data quality and the motivation of students, while projects where scientists assigned tasks to the classes were not as successful, as they (the projects) depended on the mediating skills of the teachers.
Some case studies also showed the importance of informing the students about the project and what the data they collected would be used for. In the “Plastik Piraten” project, where students in Germany collected water samples to determine the amount of plastic in water bodies such as rivers, the students were divided into two groups. In the first group the project team explained the idea and goals of the CS project, while this wasn’t done for the second team. In the initial stage of the project, there was no big difference in the motivation and interest of the students, but the first group showed a long-term interest, while the interest of the second group declined with time.
Although many projects (e.g. in schools at Pölten und Mödling in Austria) showed that the understanding of the subject of research greatly increased through participation, the motivation factor or change of behaviour (for example, how the Plastik Piraten project influenced the behaviour towards plastic waste) hasn’t been fully evaluated yet, probably because motivation aspects or change of behaviour are difficult to measure, compared to the understanding of the subject, which can easily be measured by a test.
A new approach to cooperating with students are projects which take into account access to and usage of technical equipment by the “modern student”. One project designed a special app for emergency cases, based on the fact that in Austria 92% of 12–19-year-old purses a smartphone. One function of the application has been to analyse the time needed to evacuate from a certain location, and this function has been improved by students measuring the actual time needed for evacuating.
Another interesting example is the Nano-O-Style project, which is researching the effect of nano materials used in everyday products such as cosmetics, on human health. To get an idea of the omnipresent influence of nano particles in our everyday lives, students from various partner schools were asked to brainstorm online and in their classes. 90% of the information collected was applicable.
Workshop — Evaluation of Citizen Science projects in the praxis.
This workshop was organized by the team of the Austrian CS online platform “Österreich forscht” and the team of the German online portal “buergerschaffenwissen.de”. The Austrian platform, which was initially launched by two master students, asking CS projects all over Austria to join, has now grown to host 55 projects. With the increasing number of projects applying to the platform, a need for criteria to ensure the quality of the projects has come up.
The quality criteria were developed in the time period of March 2017 to February 2018. It was finally agreed upon to define “What isn’t CS”, instead of defining “What is CS” , which might have made it too restrictive or exclusive.. 20 questions in 6 different fields (Science, Ethics, Open Science / Transparency, Communication, Data Management, Collaboration) were developed as the quality criteria. Projects already registered on the platform have a postponement time until the next conference to adapt these criteria, while new projects have to fulfil them from this point on.
With this background information, participants were divided into groups of 5–8 people, to evaluate CS projects on the German online platform “buergerschaffenwissen.de” using the quality criteria of the Austrian platform “Österreich forscht”. Each group had a different project and was given thirty minutes to discuss it. Then the results were shared, and it was found that the majority of projects were not able to fulfil all the criteria. This lead to the next discussion, as how to decide whether a project can or cannot be registered on the website. Would it really have to fulfil all the criteria, or would it be better to go by a point system with a minimum rate?
Participants also became aware of the fact that it would take a huge amount of time and staff to evaluate just one project, as most of the groups were not able to complete answering the questions. Yet, creating a certain standard for projects on the portal is a pressing issue, as funding is limited and because projects are at the same time representative of national CS projects.
Mr. David Ziegler, (a member of the German platform team) said that it was risky to stiffen criteria at the initial stage of forming an online platform, as it would make the registration difficult, thus blocking potential projects.
Programmes — the Barock Gala Dinner and action day.
I would like to mention the “Barock Gala Dinner”, in the evening after the first day of the conference. The CS project “Salzburg zu Tisch” served a wonderful and unique dinner, recreating recipes from the baroque era (this project is a cooperation of citizens in Salzburg and the Salzburg university). Some of the citizens were invited to talk about their motivations and interests in taking part in this project. Parts of the recipes were read before each dish, and it was interesting to listen to the German language of that time, or wonder about the vagueness of instructions such as “cook for a good while” or “take a certain amount of”. (without further specification of the “certain”).
Finally, there was an action day on the last day of the conference, which I was not able to participate in, but which was very positively rated by those who did. There were four event locations spread over Salzburg, each with a full day programme and various CS projects to take part in.
The fourth Austrian Citizen Science Conference was originally published in The CitizenScience.Asia Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
