Citizen science in the social sciences and humanities: the power of interdisciplinarity

Loreta Tauginienė (), Eglė Butkevičienė, Katrin Vohland, Barbara Heinisch, Maria Daskolia, Monika Suškevičs, Manuel Portela, Bálint Balázs and Baiba Prūse
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Loreta Tauginienė: Office of the Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures
Eglė Butkevičienė: Kaunas University of Technology
Katrin Vohland: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Barbara Heinisch: University of Vienna
Maria Daskolia: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Monika Suškevičs: Estonian University of Life Sciences
Manuel Portela: Institute of New Imaging Technologies
Bálint Balázs: Environmental Social Science Research Group—ESSRG
Baiba Prūse: Institute for Environmental Solutions

Palgrave Communications, 2020, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Citizen science evolved through multiple disciplinary manifestations into a new field of study and a participatory method of enquiry. While most citizen science projects take place within problem-focused natural sciences, social sciences and humanities help understanding the human dimension and open a broad methodological spectrum for enriching scientific research with new approaches and for boosting public participation. In this paper, we use a meta-synthesis approach to explore how citizen science is practised in the so far less addressed social sciences and humanities by focusing on the role of the citizens, the goals and approaches of the projects, the tasks in which citizens are engaged and their gains across projects of diverse disciplinary background. Our findings indicate that social sciences are gaining more acknowledgment within interdisciplinary citizen science projects by addressing ‘wicked’ problems of human behaviour and agency, while humanities are in quest of a better-defined locus in citizen science. We conclude that social sciences and humanities still face considerable barriers to infiltrate citizen science; the payoffs are substantial and already rewarding for several subfields in social sciences and humanities.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-020-0471-y

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