Publications in Citizen Science Field - Identification and Valorisation Issues
Creators: name: Bats, Raphaëlle
name: Garnier, Mathilde
name: Ricaud, Clément
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Parallel Session 5 - Building Communities: bolstering the library network
citizen science
open science

description: Abstract As it can be attested by the creation of the academic label ‘Science With and For Society’ in 2021, the 2022 calls for citizen science projects from the National Agency for Research, the citizen science indicator established by the Academic Sustainable Development &amp; Social Responsibility label, the French universities interest in citizen science keeps being reinforced. Open Science is clearly stated at the core of these policies and the French Law on Research Programmeming mentions the importance ‘to enable the advent of a more Open Science to citizens leading to a reconsolidation of the democratic link at the closest of the local levels’ (Law on Research Programmeming, 2020). Nowadays, the last cornerstone of Open Science – citizen science –, is subject to a greater attention, as recommended by the UNESCO (2021). The transition context calls for renewing citizen involvement into scientific progress. In addition, the context of rejection of science increases the will of researchers to raise awareness among citizens through participation in their projects and to pass the results on the greatest number of people. However, these projects and their results remain difficult to identify and disseminate to citizens (Bats, 2022): the projects are poorly covered, the SAPS labelled institutions find it difficult to list on-going participative projects, the European Citizen Science Association’s directory lists only 8 of the French projects. Low visibility questions the possibility to spread collectively produced knowledge. Yet, isn’t there a role here for academic libraries to work on facilitating a real circulation of citizen science projects outcomes? So far, they focused their actions on training (CSWG LIBER, 2021), interfacing between internal and external partners (SKS, 2021) and events passing on participative projects (Mumelaš et al, 2022). Thus, we may assume that reinforcing the role of libraries entails the ability to identify citizen science publications so they can be spread to students, researchers, citizens and decision-makers. Starting from a bibliometrics experimental work meant to identify publications related to citizen science projects at the Bordeaux University and comparing it to thesauri used in other institutions, we identified the most used terms and marking spaces (acknowledgements, titles, keywords, full text) and we built connexions between them and citizen science projects types. We also compared the terms used by either researchers or students in bibliometrics analyses, bibliographic searches and interviews. These studies show that the variety of participative projects leads to diverse lexical usage and publication formats. It also shows that all citizen science publications are not identified as such. This study enabled us to build a bibliometrics research plan and a thesaurus for institutions looking to identify citizen science publications and to offer researchers a list of publication recommendations. This thesaurus opens trails to work on promotion projects for these publications and to favour citizen science acknowledgement for citizen and academic scientists. Working along with citizen science stakeholders will help academic libraries in reinforcing their position as focal points for interdisciplinary knowledge and as intermediate between academic circles and society.