Citizen science and opening up research

Most open science advocacy has focused only on opening up research to other researchers. But in the social sciences numerous different positions have advocated opening up also to our research subjects, the people who participate in or 'undergo' studies, who have their lives, views and behaviours interpreted and often changed. We use the term 'citizen social science' to cover all efforts to bring the voices of non-professional stakeholders and research 'subjects' fully into the undertaking of research. 

The potential gains are threefold:

1. Producing meaningful theory and study salient topics – making research subjects co-participants from the outset in surfacing and designing questions, and determining what is to be studied, and how – an approach especially vital in applied research.

2. Improving methodological rigour – citizens' involvement boosts accuracy and reduces the scope for distorting researcher 'power' biases (otherwise very hard to appreciate or counteract). Citizen views can help in evolving measurements and indices and commenting on research findings to strengthen the robustness and replicability of research.

3. Specific normative rationales inform many participatory research approaches to developing research that is 'co-produced' with citizen groups – e.g. boosting encouraging reconciliation in post-conflict situations; improving individual and community capacities in development studies; 'decolonizing' legacy research approaches used to study colonial people and other historically disadvantaged groups; or deliberative democracy's quest for more consensual understandings of how best to mitigate social problems or make policy choices.

Dr Denisa Kostovicova's research on enhancing peace and reconciliation between different communities in the Balkans gives her a unique insight into the gains and difficulties of opening up social science research to wider societal actors.