How to Bring Citizens into Your Research
Some of the most useful data in science was collected by people who never held a research contract. Here is how to invite the public into your work in a way that is fair, rigorous and worth everyone’s time.
In 2007, a small team of astronomers had a problem. They had images of around a million galaxies and nowhere near enough people to sort them. So they asked the public for help. The site was called Galaxy Zoo, and within two weeks of launch, volunteers had classified more than a million galaxies.
That project grew into Zooniverse, which by 2025 had over 2.7 million registered volunteers working on projects in astronomy, ecology, history and medicine. Some of them have made genuine discoveries. In 2012, two Planet Hunters volunteers found a planet orbiting in a four-star system.
This is citizen science: research in which members of the public contribute their knowledge, time or resources to real scientific work. It is not a side activity or a public relations exercise. Done well, it produces data, insights and questions that a research team could never reach alone.
That’s why the European competence framework for researchers, ResearchComp, lists “Promote citizen science” as one of the core skills under Managing Research Tools, next to managing research data and intellectual property. In other words, it is part of the job, not an optional extra.
So, what does good citizen science look like, and how do you start?
What citizen science actually is
Citizen science is often confused with public engagement or science communication. They are related, but they are not the same.
When you give a public talk, information flows from you to the audience. In citizen science, it flows both ways. People take an active part in the research itself: collecting observations, analysing images, transcribing records, suggesting research questions, or helping interpret results.
ResearchComp starts from a simple idea: citizens are knowledge-holders. A farmer knows how a field behaves after heavy rain. A patient knows what a treatment feels like day to day. A local resident notices when the river changes colour. That knowledge is data, and it is often data you cannot collect any other way.
The European Citizen Science Association has set out ten principles for good practice. Three of them are worth keeping in mind from day one:
- It has a genuine science outcome. The project answers a real research question or informs a real decision. Volunteers are not there to make the project look inclusive.
- Both sides benefit. Researchers get data and insight. Participants learn something, gain skills, or see a problem in their community addressed.
- Participants get feedback and credit. People hear what happened to their contribution, and they are acknowledged in results and publications.
Five steps to promote citizen science in your research
Ask whether citizens can really add something
Not every research question needs public involvement. Before you start, be honest about the pros and cons. ResearchComp describes this as the foundational level of the skill: knowing when it makes sense to engage citizens, and when it doesn’t.
Citizen science tends to work well when you need data spread across a large area or a long period, when the task is easy to learn but hard to automate, or when local and lived knowledge matters. It works less well when tasks need specialist equipment, carry safety risks, or involve sensitive personal data that volunteers should not handle.
Decide where in the research cycle people come in
Citizens can join at almost any stage. They can help shape the research question, design the method, collect data, analyse it, interpret findings or share results. Most projects involve the public only in data collection, but that is a choice, not a rule.
Imagine you are a PhD student studying urban heat. You could simply ask residents to log temperatures on their balconies. Or you could first hold a short workshop where residents tell you which streets feel unbearable in July and why. The second approach takes more time, but it may point you to questions you had not thought of.
At the advanced level, ResearchComp expects researchers to integrate citizens at specific stages of the research cycle on purpose, rather than by default.
Reach beyond the usual volunteers
Citizen science projects often attract the same kind of participant: educated, middle-aged, with free time and a strong interest in science. Their help is valuable, but if they are the only people taking part, your data may miss whole parts of the population.
Think about who is affected by your research topic and who is usually left out. Then go to them, rather than waiting for them to find you. Good places to start include:
- schools, youth centres and student associations;
- libraries, community centres and local museums;
- patient groups, farmers’ cooperatives and professional associations;
- local government and civil society organisations;
Be transparent from the first contact
People give their time more willingly when they know exactly what they are part of. Before anyone joins, explain clearly:
- what the research is about and why it matters;
- what you are asking them to do, and how long it takes;
- what data you will collect about them, and how it is stored;
- who owns the data and whether it will be made openly available;
- how they will be credited and how they will hear about results.
This is also where research ethics come in. Volunteer data still falls under data protection rules such as the GDPR. If your project involves personal information, talk to your ethics committee and data protection officer early, not after the first results come in.
Close the loop
This is the step many projects forget. Volunteers send in their observations, and then they never hear anything again. That is the fastest way to lose them.
Share what you found, even when the results are preliminary or disappointing. Send a short update, publish a simple summary, or hold an event where participants can see what their work produced. Name contributors in your papers where possible, or at least thank the community in the acknowledgements.
Closing the loop is not only polite. It builds trust, keeps people involved for the next project, and gives you useful feedback on what worked.
When citizen science goes wrong, and how to fix it
Most problems in citizen science are not about the science. They are about people, communication and expectations. The good news is that they are easy to predict.
The drop-off. Hundreds of people sign up in the first week. A month later, only a handful are still active. The fix: keep tasks short, send regular updates, and show people the difference their contribution is making.
The data doubt. Your supervisor or a reviewer questions whether volunteer data can be trusted. The fix: build quality checks into your design. Use clear protocols, short training, repeated observations of the same item and expert validation of a sample. Then describe these steps openly in your methods section.
The free labour trap. Volunteers do hours of work, but the project gives them nothing back. Over time, people start to feel used. The fix: make sure participation brings real benefits, such as new skills, access to results, a certificate, or visible credit in publications.
The narrow crowd. Your participants all look alike, and so does your data. The fix: partner with organisations that already work with the groups you are missing, and adapt your project to their needs rather than the other way around.
A common mistake: Treating citizen science as a one-off campaign. A single weekend of data collection can be useful, but the most successful projects build long-term relationships with their communities. Those relationships often outlast the original research question.
Citizen science starts with one invitation
Promoting citizen science does not require a large budget or a dedicated team. It starts with a clear question, an honest look at what the public can contribute, and the willingness to share both the work and the credit.
As you gain experience, the skill grows with you. At first, you learn that citizens can contribute. Then you learn how to involve them in a fair and transparent way. Later, you design projects where people take part at every stage, and eventually you may develop new protocols that others in your field adopt.
Along the way, your research changes too. It becomes more connected to the people it is meant to serve, and more likely to be used once it is published.
This is the kind of skill SMART Researchers helps early-stage researchers build through Career Support Centres. If you missed it, read our previous blog on how to build a mentor-mentee relationship that actually works, because good research, like good mentoring, is rarely done alone.