Citizen Science Association Data & Metadata Working Group: Report from CSA 2017 and Future Outlook

With the growth of citizen science comes the challenge of coordinating people, projects, and data. These challenges also present an opportunity. Through the use of data and metadata standards and other mechanisms to promote interoperability, data can support multiple research questions, allowing citizen science to help address ever-grander issues and problems on local, regional, national, and global scales. In 2015, the U.S. Citizen Science Association (CSA) founded a Data and Metadata Working Group to promote collaboration in citizen science through the development and/or improvement of international standards for citizen science data and metadata. The first formal meeting of the Data and Metadata Working Group was held at the CitSci2017 Conference, on May 17th, 2017, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The goals of this meeting were to: (1) Convene new and existing working group members. (2) Refine the governance structure and leadership team. (3) Review the history and mission of the working group to this point. (4) Establish an agenda for advancing the working group’s mission through projects and task forces. This consensus document reports on the outcomes of CitSci2017 and subsequent discussions and advances the shared agenda of working group members.

BOWSER Anne;  BRENTON Peter;  STEVENSON Rob;  NEWMAN Greg;  SCHADE Sven;  BASTIN Lucy;  PARKER Alison;  OLIVER Jessie; 

2018-02-08

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

JRC109593