The rise of citizen scientists
Australian Financial Review, 18 Aug 2015.
Research scientists have a new ally in their work - the growing army of citizen scientists, writes the Australian Financial Review.
More than 130,000 Australians are active in more than 90 citizen-science projects according to new research quoted by the chief scientist in a recent paper. One example is the 10 million records in the Atlas of Australian Birds database supplied by 10,000 registered bird observers since 1998.
The paper said that professional scientists are increasingly willing to use citizen scientists to collect data and that 49 per cent of projects produced research outputs while 48 per cent produced educational outcomes. Seventeen per cent of citizen-science projects led to contributions to policy.
