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About CitizenScience.gov

Our Vision

CitizenScience.gov is where science is collaborative and participation is open to everyone.

Our Mission

To nurture collaboration between the federal government and the public to advance inclusive participation in scientific discovery and research.

Our Values

Inclusion
CitizenScience.gov works to ensure our program and platform are accessible and inclusive. We value different points of view and seek to increase the range of perspectives involved in the scientific process. We work with federal agencies to highlight forms of science including participatory science, community science, open science, and citizen science that actively seek to draw in participants from underrepresented viewpoints.

Collaboration
We believe that more participation in the scientific process will lead to increased transparency and openness in scientific data collection and results. We facilitate open avenues for collaboration between the federal government and the public to advance scientific research.

Scientific Advancement
We believe participatory forms of discovery lead to better scientific outcomes and increase trust in the scientific process. We support the federal government to create scientific projects that include members of the public in scientific discovery for the good of the American people.

Learn More

CitizenScience.gov is an official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government. The site provides a portal to three key components: a catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist federal practitioners with designing and maintaining their projects, and a gateway to a community of hundreds of citizen science practitioners and coordinators across government as called for in the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2016 (15 USC 3724). You can learn more about the activities of the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science in this two-page overview document.

Through citizen science and crowdsourcing, the federal government and nongovernmental organizations can engage the American public in addressing societal needs and accelerating science, technology, and innovation.

In citizen science, the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems. In crowdsourcing, organizations submit an open call for voluntary assistance from a large group of individuals for online, distributed problem solving.

The Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority: Fiscal Years 2017-18 report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first report on crowdsourcing and citizen science activities conducted by Federal agencies. Information about the crowdsourcing and citizen science activities included in Appendix C and Appendix D of the report are available as a CSV data file (this is a raw data set).

CitizenScience.gov was developed under a partnership between the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Wilson Center), a Trust Instrumentality of the U.S. government.

This webinar from April of 2019 overviews the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science and the resources it offers through our website.