Developing a Beginner's Guide for Citizen Scientists

Our poster presents a beginner’s guide that contains the basic information package intended for citizen scientists and the development process that led to it. The guide has been drafted by the ‘Citizen Science Support and Services’ working group that operates in the national ‘Open Science and Research Coordination’ in Finland. The beginner’s guide highlights the diverse roles, motives, and ways to get involved in citizen science while going through the basics of CS in an accessible and practical manner. The aim of the beginner’s guide is to fill some of the gaps of often researcher-oriented citizen science materials and form a national toolkit that is also locally applicable. The guide headlines the following themes: What is citizen science?
Why to participate in citizen science? Who can be a citizen scientist? How to get involved? The beginner’s guide was created by a WG of 20 members from Finnish universities, learned societies and other research and academic institutions. Open science is promoted in Finland through a national coordination model in which the entire research community participates in developing national goals, co-creating policies and recommendations, and coordinating policy implementation. ‘Citizen Science Support and Services’ WG, operating within the expert panel ‘Culture of Open Scholarship’ aims to examine how to further support implementing the National Recommendation for Citizen Science (2022) by developing services, guidelines, and other practical means of action. The CC-BY licensed beginner’s guide developed by the WG is designed for the use of higher education institutions, schools, local communities as well as public and scientific libraries to serve as a practical tool for engagement and collaboration aiming to raise awareness about citizen science with a community-centered approach. The poster gives an overview of the contents of the beginner’s guide and describes its creation process as an example of research community participation in the national ‘Open Science and Research Coordination’ in Finland.