83 Free Tools and Resources for Your Citizen Science Projects

What is citizen science? Citizen science uses the collective strength of communities and the public to identify research questions, collect and analyze data, interpret results, make new discoveries, and develop technologies and applications – all to understand and solve environmental problems. Citizen science is sometimes described as “public participation in scientific research,” participatory monitoring, and participatory action research whose outcomes are often advancements in scientific research by improving the scientific community’s capacity, as well as increasing the public’s understanding of science.

Around the world ordinary people of all ages engage in citizen science—participating in projects in which volunteers and scientists work together to answer real-world questions. Much of this work is conducted close to home, sometimes in our own backyards or even in our living rooms and kitchens, with guidance from professional scientists and using established science protocols and tools. Regardless of the location and process, citizen science brings everyone into the important work of learning more about and protecting our planet.

Below is a curated list of awesome software and other resources to enable those who want to use scientific tools to empower communities and/or practice various forms of non-institutional science. All of the digital softwares and tools on this list are either free or open-source, so you can use them right away.

Literature

Citizen Science Theory

1. Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of Participatory Research
2. Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science
3. The Potentials and Limitations of Civil Society Research: Getting Undone Science Done
4. Citizen Engineering: Disrupting Expertise in Classroom and Community
   A paper introducing the concept of “citizen engineering” as a companion to citizen science
5. Institutions for Civic Technoscience: How Critical Making is Transforming Environmental Research
6. Citizen Science as an Ecological Research Tool: Challenges and Benefits
7. Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition
8. The Science Wars and the Future of the American Academic Profession
   Caltech chemistry professor Jay A. Labinger’s paper about the need for scientists to engage with critical science studies scholars.
9. Science for the People
   A late 1960s/early 1970s radical science movement whose literature has been organized on a website by UMass Amherst.
10. From the March for Science to an Abolitionist Science
    An article that offers several historical and current critiques of science that propose alternative ways of doing scientific work.

Citizen Science Practice

1. Lead Concentrations in Inner-City Soils As a Factor in the Child Lead Problem
   A 1983 pharmacology paper detailing a low-cost, low-tech method of doing soil heavy metal testing.
2. How to Run a Feminist Science Lab Meeting
   A guide by the Civic Laboratory in St. John’s, Newfoundland

Educational

1. Light and Matter
   Benjamin Crowell’s free-to-download, cheap-to-buy open source physics textbooks.
2. OpenStax
   Repository of open-licensed and collaboratively-edited textbooks on many basic subjects. You can download them as ebooks or order print copies.
3. PhET Simulations
   CU Boulder interactive physics and chemistry simulations.
4. United Diversity Co-op Library
   A vast library of interesting textbooks and other resources in PDF form on such topics as permaculture, agriculture, economics, crafts and activism.
5. Microbe Wiki
   A large student-edited multi-institutional wiki for microbiology.
6. OpenWetWare
   A site that maintains a list of bio lab protocols as well as an electronic lab notebook for team use.

Publishing and Doing Research

1. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice
   An open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to discussion about methods in citizen science.
2. Scholar Subreddit
   A great place to request help getting access to scientific papers that are beyond paywalls.
3. Library Genesis
   An online tool for gaining access to scientific articles that are normally beyond paywalls.
4. Public Library of Science (PLOS)
   Nonprofit organization that publishes open-access journals and also advocates for openness and tranparency in science.
5. arXiv
   A Cornell-supported site for sharing and discussing early drafts of scientific papers (mostly physics and math).
6. Directory of Open Access Journals
   Over 9000 journals listed.
7. Investigative Dashboard
   A tool for researchers, especially journalists, to share documents and findings.

Publishing , Collaboration and Organization

1. Zotero
   Open-source citation management software.
2. TiddlyWiki
   Easily create your own wikis to organize information.
3. Evergreen ILS
   Software for managing a library of books (and the loaning process).
4. GanttProject
   Productivity tool for scheduling tasks and making Gantt charts.
5. Open Science Framework
   Open-source collaborative project manager for scientific research.
6. Calibre
   eBook management software.
7. LibraryThing
   An online platform for organizing your library.
8. PECE
   The Platform for Experimental and Collaborative Ethnography. This project provides an online platform for academic collaboration that helps keep track of complex attribution of credit. It is geared toward anthropologists but is expanding to become more broad.

Tools and Equipment

1. Global Village Construction Set
   Open-source farm equipment and other civilization-building tools.
2. Farming Concrete Data Collection Toolkit
   Methods for measuring the outcomes and impacts of community gardens and urban farms.
3. Generic Lab Equipment
   Wiki with instructions on building DIY lab equipment.