SciStarter recruits, trains, and equips people for
citizen science
Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...
research projects in need of their help. It was founded by
Darlene Cavalier
Darlene Cavalier is an American professor of practice at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. She is the founder of SciStarter (a science portal and research platform), founder of Science Cheerleaders (a non ...
and is a research affiliate of
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. SciStarter is a collection of smart web tools and an event-based organization that connects people to more than 1,200 registered and vetted
citizen science projects, events, and tools. New tools, developed by SciStarter with support from the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
, enable citizen scientists to find, join, and track their contributions across projects and platforms. The organization's primary goal is to break down barriers preventing non-scientists from fully engaging in scientific research.
Approach, Activities, & Results
The organization received a grant from the
Simons Foundation
The Simons Foundation is a private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the US with assets of over $5 billion in 2022, the foundation's mission ...
to create open, customizable, plug-and-play software tools for ease of use, including application programming interface (
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
) documentation. Once projects are reviewed and shared on the site, anyone living within the prescribed geographic area of a study with internet access to the site can input live data. Information about SciStarter projects are also shared on the organization's partner sites, who export or import records with the SciStarter database. SciStarter's partner organizations include CitSci.org, the
Atlas of Living Australia
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is an online repository of information about Australian plants, animals, and fungi. Development started in 2006. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an organisation sig ...
,
Discover Magazine
''Discover'' is an American general audience science magazine launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It has been owned by Kalmbach Publishing since 2010.
History
Founding
''Discover'' was created primarily through the efforts of ''Time'' mag ...
, the CitizenSci blog on the Public Library of Science (
PLOS
PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and laun ...
), the
Philadelphia Media Network, Cornerstones of Science, the
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
television show "The Crowd and the Cloud", the
PBS Kids
PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS. Instead, ...
television show "
SciGirls
''SciGirls'' is an American live-action/animated children's television series that premiered on February 11, 2010 on PBS Kids. It has a mix of live-action and animated segments. It is produced by Twin Cities PBS and builds on the "real kids doin ...
,"
The TerraMar Project
The TerraMar Project was self-described as an environmental nonprofit organization. It was founded in 2012 in the United States by Ghislaine Maxwell. A sister organisation in the United Kingdom was incorporated in 2013. TerraMar (U.S.) announced ...
,
Astronomy Magazine
''Astronomy'' is a monthly United States, American magazine about astronomy. Targeting amateur astronomy, amateur astronomers, it contains columns on sky viewing, reader-submitted astrophotography, astrophotographs, and articles on astronomy and ...
, the National Science Teachers Association (
NSTA), and AllforGood.org.
SciStarter began a partnership with the
National Science Teachers Association
The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), founded in 1944 (as the National Science Teachers Association) and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is an association of science teachers in the United States and is the largest organization ...
(NSTA) to provide elementary, middle, high school, and college science teachers with age-appropriate citizen science-related activities for science classrooms.
In 2012–2013, SciStarter organized a contest on the
Instructables
Instructables is a website specializing in user-created and uploaded do-it-yourself projects, currently owned by Autodesk. It was created by Eric Wilhelm and Saul Griffith and launched in August 2005. Instructables is dedicated to step-by-step ...
site to have participants develop
do it yourself videos to support four different citizen science projects. The activities included creating a less-expensive hail pad for a weather-related project, creating methods of protecting sunflowers from animals before they are visited by bees, helping encourage and remind participants to submit data for a plant observation project, and finding low-cost methods for collecting and transmitting climate data wirelessly.
In 2014, SciStarter partnered with the Science Cheerleaders and the
Pop Warner Little Scholars
Pop Warner Little Scholars, commonly known simply as Pop Warner, is a nonprofit organization that provides activities such as American football, for over 425,000 youths aged 5 to 16 years old, in several nations. It is the largest youth footbal ...
organization to swab athletic shoes, smart phones, and other surfaces to identify the types of
microbes
A microorganism, or microbe,, ''mikros'', "small") and ''organism'' from the el, ὀργανισμός, ''organismós'', "organism"). It is usually written as a single word but is sometimes hyphenated (''micro-organism''), especially in olde ...
growing in public spaces. Some of those microbes were launched to the
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...
to observe their growth and behavior in microgravity. The project managed to collect a new species of microorganism and a draft genome for that species was subsequently mapped.
Awards
The organization receives awards from the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Prototype Fund, the
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) is an American non-profit medical research organization that provides funding for biomedical research, STEM education, and areas of career development for scientists. Since 1970, it has been headquartered in Nor ...
,
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
, and the
University of California Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The instit ...
, Youth Learning as Citizen and Environmental Scientists Foundation, among others.
SciStarter in collaboration with
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
was awarded funding by the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
's Advancing Informal Science Learning, iCORPS-L and EAGER.
Events
The organization announced a partnership with the Citizen Science Association to organize an annual "Citizen Science Day" with the White House's
Office of Science and Technology Policy
An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific dut ...
, which first took place on April 16, 2016. Citizen Science Day activities for 2017 started on April 15 and continued through May 20.
In 2019, Citizen Science Day's featured activity is the Stall Catchers Megathon. This is an event where people meet-up in libraries to participate in an online project and help accelerate research on Alzheimer's disease. Stall Catchers (StallCatchers.com) is a citizen science project led by the Human Computation Institute. The Stall Catchers Megathon brings together thousands of people to classify 100,000 video images and complete an entire year's worth of analysis in one day.
On June 20, 2017, Darlene Cavalier and Dr.
Caren Cooper presented information about citizen science and SciStarter to attendees from the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
,
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...
,
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...
,
Institute for Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the ...
,
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
,
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
,
National Park Service
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...
, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, and other organizations. They presented trends, opportunities, and challenges in citizen science (particularly related to recruiting, training, equipping and retaining participants).
This event included:
* a brief overview of citizen science;
* a presentation and soft-launch of SciStarter 2.0, a smart collection of web components, including a dashboard and integrated login, designed to extend, enhance, and enrich participant experiences while at the same time supporting STEM research and enabling research on motivations and learning outcomes of participants;
* and a discussion on future directions for SciStarter 3.0, given the opportunities and challenges facing participants, project organizers/researchers, and supporting agencies and foundations.
SciStarter partners with
Discover Magazine
''Discover'' is an American general audience science magazine launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It has been owned by Kalmbach Publishing since 2010.
History
Founding
''Discover'' was created primarily through the efforts of ''Time'' mag ...
,
Astronomy Magazine
''Astronomy'' is a monthly United States, American magazine about astronomy. Targeting amateur astronomy, amateur astronomers, it contains columns on sky viewing, reader-submitted astrophotography, astrophotographs, and articles on astronomy and ...
and the Science Cheerleaders to activate citizen science at live events including the
USA Science and Engineering Festival
The USA Science & Engineering Festival is a bi-annual science festival held in Washington, D.C. Founded in 2010 by Larry Bock, the festival is the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in the ...
, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
Family Science Days, the Philadelphia
Science Festival
A science festival is a festival that showcases science and technology with the same freshness and flair that would be expected from an arts or music festival and primarily targets the general public. These public engagement events can be varied ...
, the Atlanta Science Festival, the Arizona Science and Technology Festival, the Cambridge Science Festival, the
World Science Festival
The World Science Festival is an annual science festival produced by the World Science Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in New York City. There is also an Asia-Pacific event held in Brisbane, Australia.
The foun ...
, SciStarter organized citizen science events at
March for Science
The March for Science (formerly known as the Scientists' March on Washington) is an international series of rallies and marches held on Earth Day. The inaugural march was held on April 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C., and more than 600 other cit ...
events across the country.
Notes
External links
SciStarter Website{{CitizenScienceNavBox
Citizen science
American science websites
Online databases