Open Source Your Citizen Science Project!

The open source software and citizen science movements have strong similarities. Both attempt to achieve a goal by increasing available labor and incorporating the very best ideas through the fostering an open environment of... [ view full abstract ]

The open source software and citizen science movements have strong similarities. Both attempt to achieve a goal by increasing available labor and incorporating the very best ideas through the fostering an open environment of participation. Professional information architects Jason Holmberg and Jon Van Oast present the story of Wild Me, a 501(c)(3) non-profit managing global scale citizen science projects for wildlife. Wild Me builds and freely distributes an open source software package for wildlife research called "Wildbook" to strengthen its own data management capabilities and extend the fruits of its labor and investment to other groups studying threatened animal populations. We present the benefits and challenges of combining open source software development with citizen science and discuss how our experience from our active projects for whale sharks (www.whaleshark.org) and manta rays (www.mantamatcher.org) influences our approaches to citizen science data management and engagement. As information architects, we present the need for data addressability, searchability, and accessibility to support the integration of domain specialists into citizen science, and we discuss how open software development can enforce good study design and enable broader, multi-disciplinary participation in projects. Finally, we present our successes, failures, and ongoing experiments in developing reusable and engaging citizen science software and projects.