Assessing data quality in citizen science (preprint)
Assessing data quality in citizen science (preprint)
复制标题
评估公民科学中的数据质量(预印本)
DOI:
10.1101/074104
复制
发表时间:
2016
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Brooke D. Simmons
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
M. Kosmala;A. Wiggins;A. Swanson;Brooke D. Simmons
Ecological and environmental citizen science projects have enormous potential to advance science, influence policy, and guide resource management by producing datasets that are otherwise infeasible to generate. This potential can only be realized, though, 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, rather than assumed to be substandard simply because volunteers generated it.