Collaborative session notes:

Open session notes

The goal of the session is to gauge the interest of the RDA community in creating an interest group focusing on solving FAIR data challenges related to data generated in Citizen Science initiatives and other initiatives based on participation and collaboration of large communities.

There have been numerous successful citizen science initiatives targeting specific research questions, but – so far – there has been limited cross-pollination between the initiatives, their communities and the broader research/innovation ecosystem. Organisations such as Citizen Science Global Partnership aim to address this gap and would welcome a platform and forum to engage with the broader Open Science community to maximise the innovation potential of Citizen Science as an integral part of open science.

There is growing interest in complementing official observational networks (e.g., meteorology, air quality sensors) with citizen-generated data, especially in areas where the official network coverage is poor. However, having been involved in some of initiatives aiming at this kind of data integration, the conveners of this session have identified a range of technical, semantic, organisational and legal challenges. These will likely become topics of more focused activity in a form of an RDA working group. However, the purpose of this BoF session is community building, with a goal of creating an RDA interest group that would facilitate a more systematic analysis of the challenges and opportunities related to Citizen-Generated data.

The session is

1. Opening and goals of the BoF session, Faith Nangila, TeachSTEM, Co-Coordinator, CSAQ CoP – 5 minutes
2. Lightning talks – 30 minutes (5 minutes per talk, a few immediate questions)
   1. Current landscape on Citizen Science: Nuria Castell, Senior scientist at NILU – The Environmental and Climate Institute, Co-Coordinator, Citizen Science and Air Quality Community of Practice (CSAQ CoP)
   2. CODATA Task Group – Carolynne Hultquist, Co-chair of the CODATA Citizen-Generated Data for the SDGs Task Group
   3. Air-Quality monitoring, Faith Nangila, TeachSTEM, Co-Coordinator, CSAQ CoP
   4. Legal, Organisational, Technical and Semantic Interoperability of Citizen-Generated data, Matti Heikkurinen, CODATA
   5. Tools for fine-grained semantics and access control of Citizen-Generated Data, Slava Tykhonov, CODATA
3. Q&A and discussion – 40 minutes
4. Wrap-up and follow-up planning – 15 minutes

• https://citizenscienceglobal.org/ 
• https://nilu.com/
• https://codata.org/initiatives/task-groups/citizen-science-for-the-sustainable-development-goals/
• Citizen Science Global Partnership Air Quality CoP | Groups | LinkedIn