Jonathan Silvertown

A citizen scientist is any non-professional who collects and/or processes data as part of a scientific enquiry. A century and a half ago, this definition would have fit almost all scientists, most of whom made their living in some other profession. Today, most citizen scientists work with professional counterparts in projects that have been specifically desig

Read A new dawn for citizen science TREE 2009

ned or adapted to give amateurs a role, either for the educational benefit of the volunteers themselves or for the benefit of the project. The best examples benefit both. We have been doing citizen science at the Open University for 30 years (e.g. Cook et. al.1986. "Post industrial melanism in the peppered moth." Science 231: 611-613).

There is a major Open University programme of events to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009. This includes the Evolution MegaLab which is a range-wide survey of shell polymorphism in the banded snails Cepaea nemoralis and C. hortensis. Collaborators in 15 European countries are taking part and the MegaLab website is available in 10 languages. The internationalization of the project has been funded by the British Council as a part of their Darwin Now programme.

Members of the public throughout Europe are being invited to participate in the survey. Thanks to support from the Royal Society we have been able to d

Visit our stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, June 30th - July 4th 2009

igitize historical data on 10,000 populations of Cepaea. Everyone who submits new data to the website receives automated, personalized feedback that compares their results with any relevant historical observations that we have. At the end of the project in 2010 we will compare historical and modern datasets to test for evolutionary change in response to the warming of our climate and changes in predation by birds over the last 50 years. These results will be published.

More and more people are interested in nature and are conscious that so much of what we value is under threat. At the same time, fewer and fewer people can actually identify what they see. The iSpot website, funded by a grant from the Big Lottery Fund under the OPAL consortium will enable us to help people identify common animals and plants and to share their observations.

The Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) network, in which the Open University is one of the major partners, is developing a wide range of local and national programmes to encourage people from all backgrounds to get back in touch with nature. The project will also generate valuable scientific data concerning the state of our environment.

By bringing scientists, amateur-experts, local interest groups and the public closer together, lasting relationships will be formed and environmental issues of local and global relevance explored.

Read some correspondence in Nature about iSpot, published 14 Oct 2010