scholarly journals Towards a Transdisciplinary Theoretical Framework of Citizen Science: Results from a Meta-Review Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7904
Author(s):  
Andrea Spasiano ◽  
Salvatore Grimaldi ◽  
Alessio Maria Braccini ◽  
Fernando Nardi

This work intends to lay the foundations for a theoretical framework of citizen science combining social and organizational implications with the support of information technologies. The proposed theoretical framework moves towards a shared and common research process between experts and citizens to deal with environmental and social challenges. The role and capacity of online communities is explored and their engagement capacity by means of web-based digital platforms supporting crowdsourcing activities. In this contribution, authors highlight the most common practices, methods and issues of citizen science approaches adopted from multidisciplinary application fields to obtain insights for designing a new participative approach for organizational studies. To reach this goal, authors illustrate the results of a systematic meta-review analysis, consisting of an accurate selection and revision of journal review articles in order to highlight concepts, methods, research design approaches and tools adopted in citizen science approaches.

Author(s):  
Zoya N. Mishina

The engineering and technical service of an agricultural enterprise is the core of the production management system. The level of its organization largely determines the effectiveness of equipment and technologies used in production. The strategic goal of agricultural engineering services at all levels is to change radically the system of machine and technological security of agricultural producers. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in determining the economic and social tasks of engineering and technical services in the agro-industrial complex. (Materials and methods) In order to assess the efficiency of engineering departments, it is necessary to analyze the level of use of the company's machine-tractor and automobile fleets. Improving the reliability of the machine and tractor feel now becomes a priority. The majority of experts present this task in the set of measures that practically do not affect the question of perfection of the engineering service. (Results and discussion) The article shows that the development of innovative processes in the field of mechanical engineering contributes to the entry of new equipment and technologies into production and causes the need for farm engineers to study novelties and ways of their effective application. The promising version of the engineering service offers its structure and material support, which will not only provide high production indicators, but also allow specialists to constantly analyze technological processes, search for their reserves using modern information technologies. There is an urgent need to develop models of information support for engineering services, automated workplaces for engineers, the formation of on-farm databases and specialized computer programs to work with it. (Conclusion) The expected efficiency of implementing research results will reduce the cost of maintaining technological machines and equipment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-121
Author(s):  
Vasyl Kovalov ◽  

Active introduction of digital technologies in all spheres of life is one of the main directions of state development as a whole and separate sphere of activity. The issue of using information technologies and systems during forensic examination is the subject of scientific research of many domestic and foreign scientists, but this sphere remains relevant. The introduction of digital technologies in forensic activities is one of the priority areas for the forensic science development at the present stage and has significant development potential. One of the areas of optimization and improvement of forensic activity is the development of methods to automate the formation of forensic experts and unify the description of the research process, identified features, justification and formulation of forensic conclusions, which requires legislative consolidation and regulation, analysis and definition of the subject area and development requirements and algorithms for the operation of the system interface. Unification and standardization of the content of forensic experts' opinions requires the development of common standards and an information system adopted by all subjects of forensic expertise, and meets the needs of practice. The development of an information system for forming an expert opinion and automatically forming an expert opinion will allow formalizing and unifying the description of research and results of forensic examinations, optimizing the time of forensic experts and potentially reducing the number of logical, typographical and technical errors, and simplifying quality control of forensic examinations. The proposed system will not only automate the technical work of registration of research results carried out during forensic examinations, but will also contain research algorithms, which will be stored in the form of data on already conducted research of similar objects (list and sequence of operations, identified features and their parameters).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannik Schaaf ◽  
Michaela Neff ◽  
Joerg Scheidt ◽  
Michael Steglich ◽  
Holger Storf

Citizen science allows involving interested citizen in the entire research process in science. In the past, various citizen science projects have been performed in different research fields, especially in human medicine. We conducted a rapid scoping review to determine which citizen projects in human medicine already used software-based systems to engage citizens in the research process. Furthermore, we analysed which of the software-systems are publicly available, especially in the field of rare diseases, how citizens can participate using those tools and whether the usability was rated by the participants. To get insights for our project “SelEe (Seltene Erkrankungen bürgerwissenschaftlich erforschen)”, which is a citizen science project in rare diseases funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), we aimed to identify projects in this research area. We searched PubMed for articles between 2011 and 2021 and performed a title- and abstract screening, as well as a full-text screening. Finally, 12 studies were identified in different research areas like public health, genetic research and infectious diseases. We could not identify any study directly associated with rare diseases. None of the studies investigated usability of those systems. Furthermore, five publicly available citizen science software-systems were identified. Three of them are general systems that allow creating, operating, managing citizen science projects and including citizens in the research process. In further investigations, we will check and compare these systems, if they are appropriate for use in our SelEe-project.


2021 ◽  
Vol 941 (1) ◽  
pp. 012008
Author(s):  
Tatiana Sergeevna Kolmykova ◽  
Natalya Petrovna Kazarenkova ◽  
Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Merzlyakova ◽  
Oleg Valeryevich Aseev ◽  
Petr Petrovich Kovalev

Abstract The global process of digital transformation of the economic space currently involves all industries. The introduction of digital technologies and platform solutions into the activities of enterprises in the agricultural sector is a strategically important task to ensure the country’s food security, the solution of which is being carried out within the framework of the national project “Digital Agriculture.” The relevance and the need for digital transformation of agriculture and the food industry are due to the new capabilities of managing agro-industrial complexes, as well as the modern conditions for the formation and realization of their development potential. The research focuses on instruments of digitalization of agriculture as a way of innovative optimization of its development. The efficiency of introducing digital innovations and information technologies into agriculture is based on improving the efficiency of production processes, organizing and managing an agricultural enterprise, taking into account the elimination of targeted conflicts, while achieving a balance of productivity and environmental friendliness of technological processes. This approach to the digital transformation of the agricultural sector will contribute to the qualitative restructuring of all production and organizational processes, which will ultimately create the prerequisites for increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of agriculture as a whole.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger

Chapter 1 lays out the book’s theoretical framework. Accepting the claim that Israel is a neoliberalizing society, it asserts labor’s agency and its potential to thwart neoliberalism as part of a struggle taking place on the ideological or symbolic level too. It then proposes neocorporatism as a useful conceptual approach, and links this to union revitalization and concepts of power. These theoretical terms and concepts are used to anchor the three “spheres” of union activity which structure the book: union democracy, or workers’ relationship to their representative organization; the balance of power between labor and capital, and the way the potential clash of interests between them is viewed and played out; and the relationship of labor to the political establishment and wider political community. Finally, a short coda explains the research process and approach that led to the book.


Author(s):  
Ditte Kolbaek

This chapter presents a suggestion for design-based research (DBR) as a methodology for organizational studies. Although DBR was developed for investigating classroom training, this chapter discusses the methodological issues that are involved when DBR is employed for investigating learning in the context of work. DBR seems to be suitable in this complex context as it is an authentic learning environment. The purpose of this chapter is to provide new perspectives on DBR, including suggestions for guidelines regarding how to conduct DBR for studying learning from experience in the context of work. The research question is: What is needed to utilize DBR to explore learning from experience in the context of work? The theoretical framework is based on Yrjö Engeström and John Dewey's work on learning, and the exploration of DBR is based on a literature review and findings in a seven-year DBR study on learning from experience in the context of work.


Author(s):  
Chris William Callaghan

This paper outlines a developing stream of literature related to a theoretical framework, namely probabilistic innovation, relating it to certain literature critiquing developing academic fields and offering criteria against which a developing field can be held to be scientific or not. With ontological and epistemological roots in citizen science, participant-research and other emerging academic movements, probabilistic innovation theory is underpinned by a shift toward the democratisation of knowledge, increasing inclusivity and transparency in its processes, and a novel methodology drawing from methods such as expert crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, swarm solving and maximisation of efficiencies related to collaborations in research. With the enablement of real time research capability, or ability to solve serious scientific problems in hours and days instead of years and decades as its primary raison d'être, probabilistic innovation seeks to maximise probability of scientific breakthroughs. However, for this stream of literature to develop, it is important to proactively identify academic or scientific pitfalls facing developing areas of enquiry, and this paper attempts to offer this, deriving propositions potentially useful for developing fields in general. It is hoped real time research capability will one day become a reality, and to increase the likelihood of this, theoretical frameworks seeking this end need to face useful critique to ensure their robust development, and this paper proposed four core tensions such fields need to manage in order to successfully evolve.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Orozco Rodríguez ◽  
Erla M. Morales Morgado ◽  
Filomena Gonçalves da Silva Cordeir Moita

Often during the teaching of mathematics, students have difficulties to understand some abstract concepts. That's why it is necessary to show the student the concepts as clearly and definitely as possible. The proposal of this project is a teaching strategy. It is the use of Geometric Representation integrated Learning Objects for the internalization of concepts. The research process involves the design, development, and evaluation of Learning Objects and how it promotes understanding of the contents of the topic “Real Geometric Vectors and their application”. At the beginning of this article are the context and the latest research concerning to this project. Then an overview of the theoretical framework that supports this work is shown. Finally, the paper describes the methodology used in the project, results of data, expected contributions and conclusions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Ramachandran ◽  
Kaylin Bugbee ◽  
Kevin Murphy

<p>Open science is a concept that represents a fundamental change in scientific culture. This change is characterized by openness, where research objects and results are shared as soon as possible, and connectivity to a wider audience. Understanding about what Open Science actually means  differs from various stakeholders.</p><p>Thoughts on Open Science fall into four distinct viewpoints. The first viewpoint strives to make science accessible to a larger community by focusing on allowing non-scientists to participate in the research process through citizen science project and by more effectively communicating research results to the broader public. The second viewpoint considers providing equitable knowledge access to everyone by not only considering access to journal publications but also to other objects in the research process such as data and code. The third viewpoint focuses on making both the research process and the communication of results more efficient. There are two aspects to this component which can be described as social and technical components. The social component is driven by the need to tackle complex problems that require collaboration and a team approach to science while the technical component focuses on creating tools, services and especially scientific platforms to make the scientific process more efficient. Lastly, the fourth viewpoint strives to develop new metrics to measure scientific contributions that go beyond the current metrics derived solely from scientific publications and to consider contributions from other research objects such as data, code or knowledge sharing through blogs and other social media communication mechanisms. </p><p>Technological change is a factor in all four of these viewpoints on Open Science. New capabilities in compute, storage, methodologies, publication and sharing enable technologists to better serve as the primary drivers for Open Science by providing more efficient technological solutions. Sharing knowledge, information and other research objects such as data and code has become easier with new modalities of sharing available to researchers. In addition, technology is enabling the democratization of science at two levels. First, researchers are no longer constrained by lack of infrastructure resources needed to tackle difficult problems. Second, the Citizen Science projects now involve the public at different steps of the scientific process from collecting the data to analysis.</p><p>This presentations investigates the four described viewpoints on Open Science from the perspective of any large organization involved in scientific data stewardship and management. The presentation will list possible technological strategies that organizations may adopt to further align with all aspects of the Open Science movement. </p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Hughson-Gill

<p>Microplastics are an ever-increasing problem. Every river that was tested in a recent study found the presence of microplastics, with 80% of all plastic in the ocean coming from upstream. Despite this, there is little understanding into the abundance of plastic, its characteristics and the full impact that is it having on marine, freshwater ecosystems and wider ecological systems.</p><p> </p><p>Current fresh water monitoring does not consider the fluid dynamics of rivers, is difficult to use and is inaccessible to the wider public. My project will focus on creating a product that allows for the large-scale data collection of microplastic through citizen science. Allowing groups of people to analyse their local natural environment for the presence and abundance of microplastics within the water. This method of data collection could provide information on a scale that is not possible with traditional methods and would allow for the comparison between freshwater systems. This comparison is fundamental to begin to fill the knowledge gaps around the understanding of microplastics.</p><p> </p><p>Inaccessibility of monitoring to the public is not just through tools but also through the current communication of data with research rarely breaking into the public domain. Citizen science offers not just an improvement in understanding but also offers an opportunity for engagement with the public body. Increasing awareness of the impact of habits round plastic through the sharing of monitoring data can generate the much-needed change on both an individual and policy level to address the problem from the source. This method of change through public opinion can be seen to have an effect on freshwater systems through microbeads ban, plastic bags, plastic straws and industrial pollution regulation.</p><p> </p><p>Through the creation of this product a multidisciplinary approach that blends engineering and design practices is implemented. The wholistic approach to creation is something that is fundamental in the success of tools and therefore the success of the research that is implemented through them. A tool such as this whose function is within the public engagement of its use - increased awareness, as well as the outcome of its use - microplastics data, is required to have an engaging user experience as well as data integrity implemented through engineering design.</p><p> </p><p>This project offers an opportunity to show the importance of the design process within research tools to aid the research process and the positive impact that can come from it.</p>


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