D4.5 The accreditation discussion paper

This deliverable discusses the topic of accreditation in Citizen Science (CS) as it stands and highlightsthe potential for developing it in the future. The topic was already suggested in the preparation stage of CS Track’s proposal as a result of discussions about CS and its relation to education, measuring the quality of CS projects, and the value it returns to participants as well as a desire to create policy recommendations in this sense. We aim to present issues related to accreditation in CS and describe their manifestations during the three years of our project’s work. We refer to the way in which we preliminary stated our intentions vis-à vis accreditation in the project’s description of work (section 2), followed by an in-depth literature review (section 3), a synthesis and positioning of accreditation in the field of CS (section 4), and an account of accreditationrelated findings in CS Track (section 5). Finally (section 6), we address the ways to incorporate accreditation in CS policy and suggest policy recommendations based on our work. An annex closes this deliverable, presenting (mainly through screenshots of web pages) a few examples of existing accreditation providers, based on the literature review conducted and an Internet search. The accreditation topic has not been extensively studied in the context of CS and thus its connection to the work conducted in CS Track has remained somewhat open-ended in some cases, inviting debate and further analysis. However, this also provides an opportunity to discuss accreditation from a fresh perspective, free from disciplinerelated preconceptions. Therefore, this discussion paper serves as an exploration of what accreditation means or can mean in CS, for whom it may be beneficial, and who is or should be responsible for accreditationrelated practices.