Governance of Citizen Science Networks/Platforms: Shared Experiences

Since the early 2010s, several national networks and initiatives have been established to connect different citizen science projects in their respective countries, often across scientific disciplines. These platforms pursue several goals, such as: (1) displaying citizen science projects to an interested public; (2) connecting citizen science actors to foster innovation and learning; and (3) lobbying for citizen science in their respective contexts. However, many of these initiatives face a number of challenges. These include, but are not limited to: funding; organization of workloads (e.g. organizational structure, IPR); and framing of citizen science (e.g. transparent criteria on which projects are listed on online platforms, and which are not). In the Citizen Science Networks working group, representatives from established and emerging citizen science networks are collaborating to tackle some of these challenges. In a series of online workshops, the working group members shared their experiences in different areas of working for a citizen science network/platform. These areas of experience involve (1) the aims, (2) setup, (3) activities, (4) funding, (5) target groups and communication of citizen science networks and/or platforms, as well as (6) data collected in citizen science networks and/orplatforms. All experiences were collected in the workshop minutes and together with the information from pre-workshop activities formed the basis for this report. This report aims to inform the citizen science community about the challenges or questions faced in developing citizen science networks in different countries.