About
"Citizen science" is a term used for scientific projects where volunteers, many without scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or computation. Our group became interested in this topic and made this page after a presentation by David Lee at NCMIR in March 2010, where he gave a brief summary of many of the projects listed below. David also referred us to this brilliant article about "games with a purpose" by Luis von Ahn (big name in the field) here.
Please add to or leave a comment below if there's something we missed or needs changing!
Buzzwords
The big buzzwords in this field are:
- "Games with a purpose (GWAP)" - describes a computer game aimed at harnessing a human abilities to solve problems which computers are poor at (eg: labeling images), but in an entertaining environment (ie. free labor!). Two classic example are the ESP gameand Foldit.
- Crowdsourcing / clickworking - taking a task traditionally performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a group of people or community by making an open call for help/contributions.
- Wisdom of the crowd / collective intelligence - the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. The idea is that a large enough group of non-experts is as good, if not better than a single expert. The classic example being Wikipedia.
Interesting Citizen Science Projects
NOTE: All these games work in your browser (unless otherwise stated).
Project Name |
Description |
Impression |
Incentive |
Estimated Users |
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Games with a purpose |
... citizen science projects presented as games. |
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Users download an executable program where they can use various tools to fold 3D proteins into optimal energy shapes. Humans (or at least the skilled ones) are good at figuring out the major twists needed to solve these 3D puzzles, while the computer is good at jiggling side chains - hence the game includes many semi-automated tools like "rubber bands" and "wiggle". (read more). This game has become immensely successful and enjoyed MUCH media attention - despite the fact that if you read between the lines it's probably only a handful of the VERY best registered users actually contribute! ("foldit for fun" article) |
Awesome tutorial, great graphics and sound. Basically it FEELS like a game (a challenging 3D puzzle game) and not a chore! The tutorial itself is 29 puzzels, with LOTS of content and takes ~2hrs to finish - these puzzles helps you get the hang of clearing amino acid clashes and aligning protein backbones to create hydrogen bonding (even for those with NO knowledge of protein structure). The points system is brilliant. The other thing which makes it fun is the number of helpful/smart tools meaning there is multiple ways to solve each puzzle. |
Fun and challenging game + competing against other users to get best scores for any given protein. |
57,000 after only 2 years (updated Sep 2010)! |
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Very similar to Foldit, except two dimensional and focusing on RNA only. EteRNA released early 2011 and is designed by some of the same people who created, but different in that it allows you to design new RNA in an easy 2D interface and each well they announce a winner and synthesize that protein. There's a nice article about it in the New York Times (here). |
Unlike it's "predecessor", EteRNA is 2D and much easier to use. It's all Flash-based, but features some nice background bubble effects and a tonne of flashing lights whenever you succeed with a good score. |
Fun and challenging game + chance of winning each week and getting your RNA synthesized. |
TOO EARLY TO TELL (updated Feb 2011)! |
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Several interactive and cooperative games where you are matched with another player:
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Easy to sign up and fun to play, although buggy in some browsers. Nice point system and thermometer bar as you and your anonymous partner race against the clock. We warn you, some of the games can be a bit addictive, so expect to be there a few hours trying each game. |
Fun, help improve internet tagwords & chance to win $20 amazon gift each week. |
>20,000 member back in 2008 |
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Clicking/classification based |
... citizen science involving classification |
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In the original galaxy zoo, users were asked to classify the shapes of galaxies (eg: spiral, elliptical, edge on) in telescope images (read more on Wikipedia). The project went online Feb 2009 but is no longer live as they reached their target of 60 million classifications of a million galaxy images in April 2010 (see blog)... so now they diverted attention to other "zooniverse projects". |
Nice and easy to use with a very simple interface and big icons to click and match the shape. To take part you first needed an account, and this "Zooniverse account" now lets you log into "Moon Zoo", "Solar Stormwatch" and more. |
Contributing to large project and prizes were given every so often for people who reach next milestone. |
>200,000 users and 6 million classification * (updated Oct 2010) |
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Allows volunteers to help search for the Tomb of Genghis Khan, by looking at satellite images and tagging tomb-like structures. Supported by professionals from National Geographic, the web interface was setup in just 3 months in early 2010 so that results could compiled just in time for an expedition to Mongolia ("Field Expedition: Mongolia"). This project is lead by Dr Albert Lim, an avid archeologist and adventurer from the UCSD who has won National Geographic's explorer of the year in 2010 plus many other accolades (here). In Sep 2010 our CellSculpt team was lucky enough to meet Albert and one of his team members, Luke Barrington, an expert in machine learning and developer of "Herd It", to hear them talk about their citizen science project and how National Geographic helped it become greatly successful in just a short period of time! Although the tomb has not been found (such a feat is incredibly difficult given the secrecy regarding Genghis Khan's burial) the first expedition (mid 2010) helped find, map and protect multiple ancient structures of high cultural significance. |
The interface is beautiful simple - showing a single tile at a time with five icons (ancient structures, modern structures, tag, roads and rivers) which can be dragged on. In the tutorial phase, all images are pre-tagged by experts and so after you've dragged on up to five icons and click "done" you get immediate feedback to say "you've tagged 3 of 4 features", to show you where the experts placed the tags and useful little notes eg: "did you notice the ...". The first tutorial is 5 pre-tagged images and ~2 mins. After that you register and level up gradually from Novice 1-3 then Intermediate etc, with 10 images per level. Very minimalistic, very effective. :) |
Chance to help find the location of Genghis Khan's tomb by guiding Albert's team. |
10,000's (I believe) + 450,000 tiles processed + 1M tags (updated Oct 2010). |
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Encourages volunteers to search for tiny interstellar dust particles (~1 micron diameter) by scrolling through*"focus movies"* and clicking any likely interstellar dust tracks. There are ~1 million focus movies, each 40 images of 480x360 microns, collectively representing a set of aerogel "Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector" blocks which were exposed to open space on the Stardust spacecraft in 2000. NOTE: They estimate only 45 actual particles are in entire sample though and may take years to confirm each one for sure. (read more) |
Great concept, but does lack feedback/interactivity. The only feedback was returning to the main menu and seeing an arbitrary score. During tests we only lasted ~1 hr scrolling through poor contrast focus movies and clicking "No Track", or occasionally guessing there *might* be a track - though looking at high scores it's obvious many user persist for LONG periods. |
The first user to discover a new particle can name it and appear co-author on any paper announcing discovery. Users with high scores are listed. |
1000's (I believe) |
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A NASA site designed mostly for kids, allows users to login and help "map mars" (align high-res satellite images over lower res images) and "count craters" (drawing circles over craters). After creating a login you earn "experience points" and get trophies by visiting the "Map Room". There is also a large educational element, and from the main menu, users can watch videos or read about mars, view a full map of Mars and send virtual postcards to the Spirit Rover on Mars. The site was launched in 2009, a collaborative effort between Microsoft and NASA. It includes many hundreds of thousands satellite images and cost many hundreds of thousands to build! |
While the graphical artwork is brilliant (each room has a beautiful 3D artwork) they are perhaps too much (to the point of distraction) and we found it was not particularly obvious where to go or what to do! Even when you work out the interface, and how to navigate to the screens that matter, there is no feedback system to tell you when you've done bad, nor sound effects. The only feedback is getting experience points after going through each - absolutely nothing (and we tried this) is stopping you from quickly/blindly clicking done on each images (without aligning or drawing circles) to get level up faster. |
Help map mars. |
50,000 registered users (updated Oct 2010). |
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Clickworkers(NOTE: site down) |
Represents a one-year pioneer pilot study by NASA from Nov 2000 - Sep 2001 where volunteer users clicked on images to identify craters on Mars (similar to "Be a Martian" directly above). An analysis showed: "the automatically computed consensus of a large number of clickworkers is virtually indistinguishable from the inputs of a geologist with years of experience in identifying Mars craters."... and that while some clickworkers worked on the project for weeks, 37% of the work was done by one-time contributors. (read more) |
This project has concluded so sadly you can't test the interface - articles like this one and this one are about all that remains. However this project is still noteworthy as it was one of the first to demonstrate the public's willingness to donate time to help science, and coined the phrase "click-worker" for these users. |
Contributing to science online. |
85,000 visitors over one year! |
Reporting (real world) observations |
... citizen science where you report real world observations |
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User report bird sightings and information is collected into their eBird database. (read more) |
Haven't tested, but we like the way you can view data on a map. |
Allow bird-watchers to maintain personal records and interact with fellow twitchers. |
~35,000 |
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Volunteers use "low cost weather measurement tools" - i.e. they enter rain gauge results into database. TheCommunity Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) strives for 200,000 members by the end of 2010. |
N/A |
Good feeling of contributing |
1000's |
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Crowdsourcing |
Not so much "citizen science", but a good demonstration of crowd-power |
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The famous online encyclopedia where any user can change entries. Despite the occasional people who spam and misuse the system, the greater good prevails and most entires very accurate. No online encyclopedia comes close to Wikipedia in terms of size! |
Takes a little while to learn syntax, but after that, it's a very nice interface. |
Contributing to the greatest encyclopedia on Earth! |
6+ million |
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MTurk is a crowdsourcing marketplace. Requesters write these programs and post tasks known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a store-front, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. Workers browse HITs and complete them for a monetary payment set by the Requester. (read more) |
Haven't done, but looks like most HITs are only a few cents for minutes worth of work and interface more complex than should be (article). |
Making money (although is in VERY small amounts) |
100,000+ |
Links
- Wikipedia - Citizen Science
- scienceforcitizens.net - great site listing almost a hundred different citizen science projects - most of which concern observation and reporting of animals such as squirrels, fish ("REEF"), birds etc. Others are reporting observation of earthquakes, the weather, stars, some the sending in of DNA (swab kits) ("The Genographic Project"), blood sugar level of diabetics and one of the more unusual one is searching literature to report length of dinosaur bones ("The Open Dinosaur Project").
- Project Noah - interesting in that it's designed to work with smart phones (iPhone & Android), but is relatively new (youtube).
- Games for Change - a large collection of games "selected as games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and/or tolerant society". 3rd World Famer is a good example.
2 Comments
Andrew Noske
In case I lose it, here is a cool "Quora" forum topic Stephen Larson posted a while ago for "best examples of crowdsourcing":
> http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-examples-of-crowdsourcing
... are some very interesting and varied answers in replies, including even Lego's DesignByMe!
Anonymous