The Theory and Practice of Citizen Science: Launching a New Journal

The field of citizen science is growing with breathtaking speed. Thousands of citizen science projects are now under way around the world, engaging millions of individuals in the process of scientific discovery. In the US, citizen science has been featured at the White House and the federal government has launched a website to showcase federally funded citizen science projects (citizenscience.gov). The largest research and innovation funding program in the European Union, Horizon 2020, is investing heavily in citizen science to tackle societal problems. The Australian government has published a vision for citizen science throughout the country (Pecl et al. 2015). Three professional associations supporting citizen science recently have been launched: The Citizen Science Association (CSA; citizenscience.org), the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA; ecsa.citizen-science.net), and the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA; citizenscience.org.au/). Some researchers consider citizen science to have emerged as a distinct field of inquiry (e.g., Jordan et al. 2015). Dozens of articles focused on citizen science are appearing every month, some in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature, and Bioscience, and a number of journals across a huge range of disciplines recently have or soon will publish special issues on citizen science, including Ecology and Society, Journal of Science Communication, Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, Conservation Biology, and Biological Conservation.

In this exploding citizen science landscape, what is the role of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CSTP)?