Predatory Citizen Science?

Citizen science has become very popular in the last couple of decades. Thousands of volunteers worldwide got involved in scientific research, gathering data beyond the possibilities of most research projects (Silvertown 2009). Thus, citizen science has become a major information source for scientists, pushing forward the frontiers of science (Bonney et al. 2014). Citizen science builds bridges between the academy and society, involving people and making scientific information accessible to everyone (Vohland et al. 2021). Under this paradigm, data from citizen science should be freely available, meeting the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (Wilkinson et al. 2016), as many platforms, such as iNaturalist, do. However, some endeavors self-defined as citizen science gather information from volunteers that freely contribute data, but the resulting databases remain private for the exclusive use and exploitation of the person in charge or a reduced group of people. Moreover, other people claimed copyrights on such material (which technically belong to the volunteers that generated the information and not to the people that compiled it) to prevent other researchers to use the information and monopolize it. Such questionable practices damage the very principle of citizen science, taking advantage of the people eager to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. By definition, all citizen science endeavors should guarantee free access to the information as a reciprocity principle, sharing the compiled information under a Creative Commons license. Thus, I urge the Ecological Society of America, the Citizen Science Association, and similar organizations to set some basic principles for this kind of endeavors to guarantee information access and prevent predatory practices. Citizen science should aim to generate open collaboration among stakeholders (i.e., researchers, NGOs, governmental institutions, wildlife managers, and the society) to get most of the information generated by thousands and volunteers and translate it into ecological knowledge, conservation practice, and management actions.