Measuring epistemic success of a biodiversity citizen science program: A citation study

Abstract

This paper offers a comparative evaluation of the scientific impact of a citizen science program in ecology, ‘‘Vigie-Nature”, managed by the French National Museum of Natural History. Vigie-Nature consists of a national network of amateur observatories dedicated to a participative study of biodiversity in France that has been running for the last twenty years. We collected 123 articles published by Vigie-Nature in international peer-reviewed journals between 2007 and 2019, and computed the yearly amount of citations of these articles between 0–12 years post-publication. We then compared this body of citations with the number of yearly citations relative to the ensemble of the articles published in ecology and indexed in the ‘‘Web of Science” data-base. Using a longitudinal data analysis, we could observe that the yearly number of citations of the Vigie-Nature articles is significantly higher than that of the other publications in the same domain. Furthermore, this excess of citations tends to steadily grow over time: Vigie-Nature publications are about 1.5 times more cited 3 years after publication, and 3 times more cited 11 years post-publication. These results suggest that large-scale biodiversity citizen science projects are susceptible to reach a high epistemic impact, when managed in specific ways which need to be clarified through further investigations.

Publications in Pediatric Epilepsy: Using Bibliometrics to Determine Readings in the Field

“…4 Some bibliometric studies that go beyond just trend analysis, examining causations in productivity-for example, the association between degree type and subsequent publication output 24 or in the success of residency matches 25 -or in using bibliometric findings as a way to judge the success of academic programs. 26,28 In contrast to our study of the pediatric epilepsy literature, the study by Kutluk and Danis examined a shorter time period (1980-2018), which resulted in a smaller data set (N = 3424) compared with our data set (N = 6727). However, Kutluk and Danis went into much greater analytic detail in describing their data set than we did because our overall goals were different.…”

“…4 Some bibliometric studies that go beyond just trend analysis, examining causations in productivity—for example, the association between degree type and subsequent publication output 24 or in the success of residency matches 25 —or in using bibliometric findings as a way to judge the success of academic programs. 26,28…”

Evaluación de la calidad del aire y observación de microfauna acuática en la ciclo ruta del humedal Juan Amarillo de Bogotá, 2022: un ejercicio de ciencia ciudadana

“…La ciencia ciudadana -también conocida como ciencia comunitaria, ciencia colectiva, ciencia colaborativaha sido, durante los últimos 20 años, una nueva forma de aproximarse a los problemas de investigación, con un enfoque que trasciende del aprendizaje formal (1,2). Este tipo de investigación involucra personas cuya actividad diaria no es investigar, pero que están interesadas en diseñar y responder preguntas relacionadas con un problema de investigación (3). Así las cosas, la ciencia ciudadana incluye personas que tienen interés en servir a la comunidad en general para la solución de una necesidad, en colaboración con científicos, profesionales e instituciones científicas (4,5).…”

Citizen science in environmental and ecological sciences

“…Much of this growth is driven by the availability of information technology infrastructures such as mobile phones and low-cost sensors for gathering and reporting data, the internet for sharing data, and cloud storage for hosting and storing data 4,5 . Growing literacy levels and educational attainment in many parts of the world also make it possible for many more people to contribute to knowledge creation in a meaningful way 6,7 .Citizen science initiatives involve the public in the research process to generate genuine scientific outcomes [8][9][10][11] . These outcomes include discoveries, such as in astrophysics 12 and archaeology projects 13 ; new insights, such as in epidemiology 14 and socio-linguistics projects 15 ; evidence-based policymaking, such as in pollution-monitoring initiatives [16][17][18] ; interventions such as in public health research 19 ; and environmental governance, including in ecology and biodiversity monitoring initiatives [20][21][22] .…”

“…Citizen science initiatives involve the public in the research process to generate genuine scientific outcomes [8][9][10][11] . These outcomes include discoveries, such as in astrophysics 12 and archaeology projects 13 ; new insights, such as in epidemiology 14 and socio-linguistics projects 15 ; evidence-based policymaking, such as in pollution-monitoring initiatives [16][17][18] ; interventions such as in public health research 19 ; and environmental governance, including in ecology and biodiversity monitoring initiatives [20][21][22] .…”