Librarians can also be leaders of CS projects, coordinating and getting directly involved in all activities that a project requires. 

1. If you wish to engage local citizens, you should understand where they get their motivation and find a topic that they care about. Based on the literature overview about recruiting and retaining volunteers, West and Pateman (2016) bring out the categories of participants' intrinsic motivation:

  • understanding (learning new things, sharing existing knowledge with others);
  • values (helping the community, environment and science);
  • social (meet new people and be socially active);
  • enhancement (improving oneself through volunteering);
  • protective (reducing negative feelings or addressing personal problems);

whereas the extrinsic motivation of volunteers have more to to with the advancement of their career. 

To find out what exactly motivates people, read further in the Motivation in Citizen Science subtopic in the Engagement and Communication module. 

2. Planning the different stages of a project is a must and enables you to understand whether the project would be viable and whether you have enough resources to follow it through or not. You may need to adapt your plan and repeat some stages, if necessary, especially during the active research and discussion phase. The following scheme (Citizen Science for All. A Guide for Citizen Science Practitioners, 2017) defines one possible structure of a CS project:


When you have established the topic and overall conception of the project, you will need to work on the documentation and get into details about each aspect of the project from start to finish.

3. As the initiator and person responsible for the outcome of the project, you will need project writing skills and project management skills. Time management is important to ensure all participants carry out their activities when needed and to secure the timely completion of the project. You can read more about project management in the Project Management Skills for Citizen Science module.

4. Whether it’s data management, project management, or creating and sharing content, many of the tools you will need today are online and digital skills have become a core proficiency.

  • Keeping yourself and any data about the project safe in the digital world is essential. Choose wisely when deciding which cloud services to use for storing your data. Some examples are MicrosoftOneDrive, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Filen, MediaFire.
  • There are multiple online collaboration tools that allow your team to work more efficiently. Depending on the type of the project, decide what features would be useful and make your decision according to that. Some examples are Trello, Asana, and Google Workspace.
  • If your project’s budget does not allow you to use the most popular software, look for open-source alternatives.

5. For some projects, it may be useful to design and prepare a project kit for citizen scientists. The kit should include everything that a specific project requires, e.g., different types of instructions, a field journal, data entry sheet, observer cards, guidebooks, handbooks, measuring instruments etc.



Citizen Science for All. A Guide for Citizen Science Practitioners. (2017). Bürger schaffen Wissen: https://www.buergerschaffenwissen.de/sites/default/files/assets/dokumente/handreichunga5_engl_web.pdf. Accessed 13 February 2023.

West, S. and Pateman, R., 2016. Recruiting and Retaining Participants in Citizen Science: What Can Be Learned from the Volunteering Literature?. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 1(2), p.15. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.8. Accessed 13 February 2023.


Last modified: Tuesday, 25 February 2025, 4:36 PM