ABSTRACT. Members of the public participate in scientific research in many different contexts, stemming from traditions as varied as participatory action research and citizen science. Particularly in conservation and natural resource management contexts, where research often addresses complex social-ecological questions, the emphasis on and nature of this participation can significantly affect both the way that projects are designed and the outcomes that projects achieve. We review and integrate recent work in these and other fields, which has converged such that we propose the term public participation in scientific research (PPSR) to discuss initiatives from diverse fields and traditions. We describe three predominant models of PPSR and call upon case studies suggesting that-regardless of the research context-project outcomes are influenced by (1) the degree of public participation in the research process and (2) the quality of public participation as negotiated during project design. To illustrate relationships between the quality of participation and outcomes, we offer a framework that considers how scientific and public interests are negotiated for project design toward multiple, integrated goals. We suggest that this framework and models, used in tandem, can support deliberate design of PPSR efforts that will enhance their outcomes for scientific research, individual participants, and social-ecological systems.

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Strategic investments and coordination are needed for citizen science to reach its full potential.

Citizen science has advanced science for hundreds of years, contributed to many peer-reviewed articles, and informed land management decisions and policies across the United States. Over the last 10 years, citizen science has grown immensely in the United States and many other countries. Here, we show how citizen science is a powerful tool for tackling many of the challenges faced in the field of conservation biology. We describe the two interwoven paths by which citizen science can improve conservation efforts, natural resource management, and environmental protection. The first path includes building scientific knowledge, while the other path involves informing policy and encouraging public action. We explore how citizen science is currently used and describe the investments needed to create a citizen science program. We find that:1. Citizen science already contributes substantially to many domains of science, including conservation, natural resource, and environmental science. Citizen science informs natural resource management, environmental protection, and policymaking and fosters public input and engagement. 2. Many types of projects can benefit from citizen science, but one must be careful to match the needs for science and public involvement with the right type of citizen science project and the right method of public participation. 3. Citizen science is a rigorous process of scientific discovery, indistinguishable from conventional science apart from the participation of volunteers. When properly designed, carried out, and evaluated, citizen science can provide sound science, efficiently generate high-quality data, and help solve problems.

Ecological and environmental citizen‐science projects have enormous potential to advance scientific knowledge, influence policy, and guide resource management by producing datasets that would otherwise be infeasible to generate. However, this potential can only be realized if the datasets are of high quality. While scientists are often skeptical of the ability of unpaid volunteers to produce accurate datasets, a growing body of publications clearly shows that diverse types of citizen‐science projects can produce data with accuracy equal to or surpassing that of professionals. Successful projects rely on a suite of methods to boost data accuracy and account for bias, including iterative project development, volunteer training and testing, expert validation, replication across volunteers, and statistical modeling of systematic error. Each citizen‐science dataset should therefore be judged individually, according to project design and application, and not assumed to be substandard simply because volunteers generated it.

Citizen science creates a nexus between science and education that, when coupled with emerging technologies, expands the frontiers of ecological research and public engagement. Using representative technologies and other examples, we examine the future of citizen science in terms of its research processes, program and participant cultures, and scientific communities. Future citizen‐science projects will likely be influenced by sociocultural issues related to new technologies and will continue to face practical programmatic challenges. We foresee networked, open science and the use of online computer/video gaming as important tools to engage non‐traditional audiences, and offer recommendations to help prepare project managers for impending challenges. A more formalized citizen‐science enterprise, complete with networked organizations, associations, journals, and cyberinfrastructure, will advance scientific research, including ecology, and further public education.

Resumen. En los últimos años, la ciencia abierta ha capturado gran interés por parte de científicos, hacedores de políticas y agencias de desarrollo internacional, en gran parte debido a los beneficios prometidos por las nuevas prácticas. Sin embargo, a medida que las ideas de ciencia abierta se transforman en iniciativas concretas, comienzan a enfrentar desafíos que pueden retrasar y/o impedir su implementación. Entre ellos se incluyen: la ausencia de conocimiento y/o capacidades para realizar nuevas prácticas, barreras normativas o institucionales que impiden avanzar en la apertura, y falta de infraestructura que puede desalentar su adopción. Este trabajo sistematiza los desafíos que surgen en las prácticas de ciencia abierta con el fin de informar el desarrollo de futuras políticas de ciencia y tecnología que faciliten su avance en la región. Palabras clave: acceso abierto; código abierto; colaboración; políticas científicas. [en] The challenges of open science policies Abstract. Over the last few years, open science has captured the interest of scientists, policy makers and international development agencies, in large part because of the benefits promised by the new practices. Nevertheless, as the ideas of open science are transformed into concrete initiatives, those initiatives begin to encounter challenges that can delay and/or impede their implementation. Amongst them we find: the absence of knowledge and/or the skills to perform new practices, normative or institutional barriers that block the progress of opening up knowledge production, and the lack of infrastructure which can discourage adoption of new practices. This work systematizes the challenges that open science practices face so as to inform the future development of science and technology policies that can facilitate the advance of those practices in the region.

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