Guest post by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Coordinator

Have you thought about including members of the public in your research?  Would you like to connect and collaborate with the community around you? Alternatively, would you like to work with project leaders to answer real-world questions and gather data?

Broadly defined, citizen science is research undertaken by members of the public, often in collaboration with academic or research institutions or similar. Citizen science is a diverse practice involving various forms and aims of collaboration between academic and community researchers and a broad range of disciplines.

What are the great things about Citizen Science?

Working together as part of a community with professionals, citizen scientists can play an important part in genuine discovery, experiments, data collection and analysis. Through citizen science, any one of us can take part in extraordinary research!

We can improve our community whilst at the same time helping to provide answers to some of the big questions about the world we live in.  Whether we participate in projects that measure air quality, monitor damage from storms, or track where our rubbish is going, we can help solve problems and influence a better future for our society.

The Office for Open Science and Scholarship advocates a broad approach to citizen science, so whether you call it citizen science, participatory research, community action, co-production, public engagement, or anything else, we’re all working together to strengthen UCL activities in this area!

What do Citizen Science projects look like?

Take a look at some of the exciting citizen science projects at UCL run by various research groups and departments at UCL. Some of these projects have now been completed.

And below are a few newer ones (this list is not exhaustive):

• Take part in the Big Repair Project!
• Read about the 100 Cyclists Project!
• Learn more about Eyes on Eyes!

Also, if you’re interested, there are many platforms and projects happening outside of UCL (below are just a few):

• Thousands of people across the country take part in the Natural History Museum’s crowdsourced science projects.
• On the SciStarter website you can join and contribute to science through thousands of amazing research projects and events.
• With more than one million volunteers, Zooniverse is one of the biggest citizen science platforms in the UK.
• If you’re interested in Biology, Ecology or Earth Science, check out the citizen science projects run by the National Geographic Society.
• The InSPIRES Open Platform is an online collaborative and crowdsourced database featuring many citizen-led participatory research and innovation projects.
• Patientslikeme is an online platform where patients can share and learn from real-time, outcome-based health data and contribute to the scientific conversation surrounding thousands of diseases.
• The Globe at Night project aims to raise awareness about light pollution and its impacts on communities. You can report your night sky brightness observations daily.

What is UCL doing around Citizen Science?

Our Office is working to raise awareness of citizen science approaches and activities, with the aim of building a support service and a community around citizen science.  The plan is to bring together colleagues who’ve run or are currently running citizen science or participatory research projects to share good practices and experiences with each other and support and encourage others to do the same!

If you are interested in citizen science, we would really like to hear from you, so please get in touch with us via email at openscience@ucl.ac.uk and tell us what you need.

Guest post by Christine Daoutis, Copyright Support Officer

“Can use this image I found free online?”

“I’m not sure how much of a book or an article it’s OK to copy”.

“This is my article; surely I can post it anywhere I want?”

These questions, and quite a few others, often come up in everyday research practice. They are all related to copyright. Whether you are reusing others’ materials (documents, figures, photos, video, software, data) or creating and sharing your own, understanding copyright ensures not only that you can respect others’ rights and stay within the law, but also that you can open up your research.

But understanding copyright is much more than a legal compliance issue. It is also more than an academic integrity issue. In short, it’s not just about following the rules, but also about understanding your own rights and using the rules flexibly. You can use your copyright knowledge as a tool to open up, rather than restrict, your research. For example, relying on copyright exceptions[1], and knowing how to find, reuse and acknowledge openly licensed materials[2], can give you much more freedom in how you can reuse others’ works. Crucially, knowing your rights as authors also allows you to share your research openly and, through licensing, determine how others may reuse it. Open Science practices – open access to publications, open data, open source software and hardware, co-creation projects – rely on an understanding of copyright.

To help you increase your knowledge and confidence around copyright, you can do any of the following:

1. Complete the 3-minute UCL copyright support survey to rate your confidence and tell us what support you need. If you are not sure what you need to know, the survey gives you some ideas to choose from. Currently open until 31 March 2023.
2. Complete the 20-minute Copyright Essentials online module. You will learn the basics at your own pace, using quizzes, short videos and academic-based scenarios.
3. Book a training session delivered the copyright support team. These can be in person or online, and offer you the chance to ask questions.
4. Visit the UCL copyright website for guidance on specific copyright topics.
5. Follow the copyright blog for topical articles and updates.
6. Contact the UCL copyright support team if you have a specific question, or would like to arrange bespoke training.

[1] https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/copyright/2023/02/24/fair-dealing-week-2023-part-2-three-fair-dealing-exceptions/

[2] https://creativecommons.org/faq/