Citizen Science at Southampton

About us

At the University of Southampton, we are involved in a wide range of research activities looking at Citizen Science as a form of research, bringing together researchers from computer science, social sciences, web science and more to investigate ways to maximise volunteer engagement with projects, ensure a desirable level of data quality is produced, and ensure the community around a project can sustain and maintain the project itself. We are are a member of the European Citizen Science Association. Our research looks at various topics including how to increase worker motivation, optimisation of workflows, improving data quality and more. We use interdisciplinary expertise from web science, computer science, and social science to understand the processes behind citizen science projects and plan how to make them better. Based in the Web and Internet Science research group, we also have close links to the University’s Web Science Institute and collaborate on numerous projects and activities with researchers across the university.

Overview

Citizen Science is scientific research carried out using amateur volunteers from the public, in collaboration with professional scientists and experts. Citizen scientists, members of the public who participate in these projects, have the opportunity to contribute to real research in fields as varied as astronomy, healthcare and ecology. Because of the way the projects are designed, volunteers require no or little background knowledge about the project topic that they are helping out with, although they often chose to do so because it is something of interest to them. Perhaps it is classifying a galaxy from an astronomical photograph, identifying wildlife in the Serengeti or even mapping a neuron in the brain.

More information about projects related to Citizen Science and which are affiliated with the University of Southampton can be found here.

Staff

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