Citizen science. An enriched proposal from the perspective of gamification

Citizen science is a scientific activity that allows non-professional scientists to voluntarily participate in the collection, analysis and dissemination of data for scientific projects. These projects are characterized by the participation of thousands of volunteers around the world solving simple tasks, to collaborate in a scientific project coordinated by an academic scientist. To perform these tasks, there are platforms that provide users with attractive, inclusive and motivating dynamics, in order to achieve user loyalty. One of the problems with this type of platforms is that there are often dropouts in the participation of volunteers due to low motivation, either because they lack interaction dynamics or interesting content for volunteers. Gamification is a field of study that offers to use elements of game logic to generate motivating dynamics in contexts that were not intended as a game. This article presents a way to add gamification elements to citizen science platforms and a series of indicators to evaluate whether these elements have been beneficial in the particular context of each citizen science project.