Box 2.2.
Case study: How the Ten Principles of Citizen Science informed a US policy brief

Dr Lea Shanley

The US Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) is a self-organised grassroots group of more than 350 federal employees representing 60 federal organisations. It seeks to expand and improve the US government's use of crowdsourcing, citizen science and public participation techniques to enhance agency missions and to improve scientific and societal outcomes.

In 2015, the CCS leadership worked closely with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to help shape a policy memo that would guide and encourage the use of these open science and innovation approaches across the federal government. Drawing from the Ten Principles of Citizen Science, the CCS leadership incorporated three core principles into the text of the memo. The memo (Office of Science and Technology Policy 2015) was released on 30 September 2015 as part of the White House's Forum on Citizen Science (Gustetic, Honey & Shanley 2015), co-organised by the CCS.

The principles detailed in the memo emphasised openness, accessibility, meaningful participation and recognition for contributions to ensure that the use of citizen science and crowdsourcing ‘is appropriate and leads to [the] greatest value and impact’ (Office of Science and Technology Policy 2015). The White House memo directs agencies to adhere to three principles, summarised as:

• Data quality: Data collected are credible, usable and fit for purpose;

• Openness: Datasets, code, applications and technologies used are transparent, open and available to the public, consistent with applicable intellectual property, security and privacy protections; and

• Public participation: Participation should be fully voluntary, volunteers should be acknowledged for their contributions and should know how their contributions are meaningful to the project and how they, as volunteers, will benefit from participating.