Zooniverse is a
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 ...
web portal
A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...
owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects.
The organization grew from the original
Galaxy Zoo
Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project which invites people to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies. It is an example of citizen science as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scien ...
project and now hosts dozens of projects which allow volunteers to participate in
crowdsource
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
d scientific research. It has headquarters at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and the
Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium is a public museum in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by local businessman Max Adler. Located on the northeastern tip of Northerly Island on Lake Michigan in the city, t ...
.
Unlike many early internet-based citizen science projects (such as
SETI@home) which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as
volunteer computing
Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...
, Zooniverse projects require the active participation of human volunteers to complete research tasks. Projects have been drawn from disciplines including
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
,
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
,
cell biology
Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...
,
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
, and
climate science
Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...
.
, the Zooniverse community consisted of more than 1 million registered volunteers.
By March 2019, that number had reportedly risen to 1.6 million. The volunteers are often collectively referred to as "Zooites".
The data collected from the various projects has led to the publication of more than 100 scientific papers. A daily news website called 'The Daily Zooniverse' provides information on the different projects under the Zooniverse umbrella, and has a presence on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
.
The
principal investigator (P.I.) of the project,
Chris Lintott
Christopher John Lintott (born 26 November 1980) is a British astrophysicist, author and broadcaster. He is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. Lintott is involved in a number of popular scien ...
, published a book called ''The Crowd & the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse''.
Citizen Science Alliance
The Zooniverse is hosted by the Citizen Science Alliance, which is governed by a board of directors from seven institutions in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. The partners are the
Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium is a public museum in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by local businessman Max Adler. Located on the northeastern tip of Northerly Island on Lake Michigan in the city, t ...
,
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
,
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
,
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United ...
,
University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...
,
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and
Vizzuality Vizzuality is a science and technology company focused on data visualization, web-GIS and tool development and committed to working on projects related to conservation, the environment and sustainable development. They have offices in Madrid, Cambr ...
.
Projects
Art projects
Space projects
Nature and climate projects
Biology Projects
Humanities projects
Physics projects
Retired projects
Project Builder
Zooniverse supports Project Builder, a tool that allows anyone to create their own project by uploading a dataset of images, video files or sound files. In Project Builder a Project Owner creates a workflow for the projects, a tutorial, a field guide and the talk forum of the Project and can add collaborators, researchers and
moderators to their project. The moderators for example will have partial
administrator rights in the talk, but cannot change anything concerning the workflow.
See also
*
Amateur exoplanet discoveries
*
9Spitch
*
AWI0005x3s
*
LSPM J0207+3331
*
Hanny's Voorwerp
, (Dutch for ''Hanny's object'') is a rare type of astronomical object called a quasar ionization echo. It was discovered in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel while she was participating as a volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project, part ...
*
Green Pea Galaxies
*
K2-138
K2-138, also designated EPIC 245950175 or EE-1, is a large early K-type main sequence star with a system of up to 6 planets discovered by citizen scientists. Four were found in the first two days of the Exoplanet Explorers project on Zoo ...
*
PH1b
PH1b (standing for "Planet Hunters 1"), or by its NASA designation Kepler-64b, is an extrasolar planet found in a circumbinary orbit in the quadruple star system Kepler-64. The planet was discovered by two amateur astronomers from the Planet H ...
*
Stargazing Live
''Stargazing Live'' is a British live television programme on astronomy that was broadcast yearly on BBC Two over three nights every winter from 2011 to 2017. The series was primarily presented by scientist Brian Cox and comedian and amateur a ...
*
Tabby's Star
Tabby's Star (also known as Boyajian's Star and WTF Star, and designated KIC 8462852 in the Kepler Input Catalog) is an F-type main-sequence star in the constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a ...
References
{{CitizenScienceNavBox
Science websites
Astronomy projects
Human-based computation
Citizen science
Internet properties established in 2009