The Citizen Science Starter Kit

Although citizen science is no longer a novelty, initiators are still facing challenges while implementing it. A recent survey in Flanders (Belgium) shows that the willingness to start with citizen science has not significantly increased between 2005 and 2020, with respondents indicating a fairly large need for information¹. In addition to the expected difficulty of broaching an unfamiliar research approach, it may also be hard to decide whether citizen science is the right fit for your research.

To alleviate these issues and promote continued change towards a participatory research culture at universities, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) developed the Citizen Science Starter Kit within the Horizon 2020 EUTOPIA TRAIN project. Published in 2022, and with ongoing updates in fall 2023, the starter kit is a how-to guide for beginners with the most essential information to get started. The starter kit introduces and defines citizen science, and provides a decision-making framework for evaluating its fit. There is also a specific training module with a step-by-step plan and templates, tools, and checklists to get started with citizen science.

This poster session highlights the value of the starter kit and involves the audience in capturing their information needs through post-its. We would like to hear from the audience what kind of challenges they experience(d) and which support they might need. The collected results will be analysed by VUB and will serve as input for the future development of the starter kit. Eventually, we hope that the starter kit supports researchers in informed decision-making and stimulates critical debate on citizen science. In doing so, we wish to foster a change towards a more participatory research culture and increase the uptake of citizen science.

[1] Duerinckx, A., Hens, C, Kerckhoffs, S, Van Laer, J., Verstraelen, K. (2021) Citizen science and Flemish scientists: evolutions in knowledge, opinions and attitudes. Scivil, Leuven, Belgium. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5825397