At SciStarter, we aim to reach people where they are and connect them to opportunities to do and shape science through citizen science projects in need of their help.
If someone wants to promote or recruit participants for their project, event, or tool, they register it on SciStarter. Our editors review each record before publishing it. Once it’s published, it can be shared with our partners (including CitSci.org, the Atlas of Living Australia, the U.S. Federal inventory of projects, and others listed below) who export or import records with our database. We do this through APIs we’ve developed to make it easier for project owners to add, update, and share their projects across websites. (If you have a database of citizen science projects, events, or tools you’d like to link into this system, please access the API documentation here.)
We also bring citizen science to the public through strategic editorial and marketing partnerships with organizations, aligned with our mission, already reaching millions of people.
Here’s how:
Our syndicated blog network enables us to share news about projects, people, and perspectives on a weekly basis, far beyond the reach of our website, newsletter, events and social media outreach:
Citizen Science Salon, a joint project of SciStarter and Discover Magazine is where science enthusiasts join forces with top researchers. We feature weekly collaborative, crowdsourced, and DIY research projects that relate to what millions of people are reading about in Discover, so they can take action and take science into their own hands! Community: general science enthusiasts.
CitizenSci blog on Public Library of Science examines the emerging phenomena of public participation in science from diverse disciplinary perspectives. CitizenSci bloggers, coordinated by SciStarter, bring stories about innovative projects, methodologies, and histories to help chart the changing landscape of public participation in scientific research. Community: researchers, practitioners, scientists, educators.
“Philadelphia Media Network is pleased to partner with SciStarter,” said Eric Ulken, vice president of digital content for Philly.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. “Our daily mission is to inform the residents of the Philadelphia area with the most useful and relevant news in the region. Leveraging SciStarter’s extensive coverage on science innovations and citizen participation in those innovations will help us further engage our millions of users and large contingent of local science leaders.” Each month, SciStarter’s editorial team posts a new opportunity for millions of Philadelphians to take part in. Audience: PA, NJ, DE residents.
Those are examples of the blogs we publish. (Note: There’s no shortage of projects and outcomes to write about! Contact Jenny@SciStarter.com or Alycia@SciStarter.com if you’re interested in submitting a guest post or joining our editorial team!)
Another way we help share projects, events, and tools with people is through the free and open SciStarter Project Finder. In fact, it’s at the center of this work.
With support from the Simons Foundation, SciStarter is making our ‘project finder’ feature and database of citizen science projects available for communities, media partners and websites to duplicate on their own pages. SciStarter aggregates more than 1,500 citizen science projects and events and this Simons Foundation grant enabled us to create open, customizable, plug-and-play software tools that anyone can use. In addition, now everyone who adds a project to the SciStarter database will benefit from unlimited distribution outlets, reaching millions of potential participants. Learn about additional benefits for project owners.
The APIs and codes for the widgets can be found here. Feel free to use them. You can create customized versions of your own project finder which will pull up-to-date records from our database and you can even filter for the types or locations of projects your community cares about. Through these open, easy-to-use APIs and web snippets, SciStarter shares its database of projects with:
Many other sites use the tools and several projects have been instrumental in codesigning the APIs and snippets. This has truly been a team effort. As we continue to build the forthcoming tools (or “instruments”) database, we’d appreciate input from people who use or make tools that citizen scientists can use. Kindly consider adding a tool and testing the **alpha** “add a tool” feature here. We imagine the Tools database operating in a similar manner as the Projects and Events database including a public interface to search for and access the tools. We aim to make this database open, flexible, accessible, shareable, and customizable.
Please, by all means, feel free to embed the database or project widget on your site (remember that you can filter for the type or location of projects suitable for your community), contribute to the syndicated blog network as a guest/regular author or editor so we can share your news, and/or add your projects, events, or tools to the shared database.
Most of the work we do here, in partnership with Arizona State University and in collaboration with NC State University, advances the field of citizen science research. You’re welcome to use any of our research outcomes found here: https://scistarter.com/research. If you’re interested in learning about the National Science Foundation-supported SciStarter 2.0 features we’ve developed to help participants find, join and even track their contributions across projects and platforms, we’ve posted a video and slides from a recent presentation here.
Did we mention that all of this is free?
We also offer premium services to recruit, train, equip and retain participants. This has proven valuable for programs in need of targeted recruitment (based on location where there may be gaps in data or to reach underrepresented communities, for example). Sometimes we do this through our sister organization, Science Cheerleaders, Inc., a 501 c3 organization comprised of 300 current and former NFL, NBA and college cheerleaders –who are pursuing STEM careers– who activate citizen science projects at speaking engagements and other live events. (You didn’t see that one coming, did you? 🙂 .) Some of our favorite examples of this collaborative work are: Space Microbes and GLOBE.gov’s El Nino campaign. While we polish up our Premium Services webpage, if you’re interested in learning more, please email info@SciStarter.com.
Cheers!
Darlene and the SciStarter team
