Abstract

Citizen science projects actively involve public in scientific research that generates new knowledge. The citizens collaborate with professional scientists in gathering, analyzing and interpreting the data. Active participation of volunteers in citizen science projects improves their science literacy by helping them better understand scientific methodology (how science is done) and contributes to democratization of science and decentralization of science promotion. For scientists, citizen science provides an opportunity to gather information that would be impossible to collect because of limitations of time and financial resources. Moreover, it can often operate at greater geographic scales than conventional science. In this talk, we will discuss how citizen science has been used in biological research over the past decade. We will also talk about our experiences with the citizen science project "Obtectus Finders". A particular focus of this talk will be on the opportunities that citizen science can provide to researchers working at IBISS and the opportunity for our institute to be recognised as a centre of development in this field.