The promise of citizen science
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2025.1443Keywords:
Citizen Science, Open Science, Tacit Knowledge, Common Science, Amateur ScienceAbstract
This article examines citizen science as a broad spectrum of practices ranging from entertainment to political contestation and argues that its institutionalization as an academic discipline could constrain its emancipatory potential. Through a historical gene-alogy, it demonstrates that modern science emerged outside academic institutions and was supported by diverse publics, highlighting the significance of non-professional knowledge in the production of scientific understanding. The text contends that citizens should not be portrayed as ignorant, as they possess situated and experiential expertise essential for addressing complex contemporary challenges. It further advocates for an ontological opening of science that enables the incorporation of heterogeneous actors in the coproduction of diagnoses and solutions. Drawing on cases ranging from patient movements to environmental collectives, the article shows that organized citizenry generates knowledge of public value. It concludes by proposing a new social contract that recognizes citizen science as a driving force for the production and governance of commons.
Downloads
References
Aceves-Bueno, Erendira, Adeyami S. Adeleye, Marina Feraud, Yixiong Y Huang, Mengya Tao, Yi Yang y Sarah E. Anderson. 2017. "The Accuracy of Citizen Science Data: A Quantitative Review". Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 98 (4): 278-290. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1336
Adelman-Mullally, Theresa, Cindy Kerber, Reitz, O. E., & Kim, M. 2021. "Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy and Recovery Using Alcoholics Anonymous. An Integrative Review of the Literature". Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services 59 (12): 33-39. https://doi.org/10.3928/02793695-20210324-05 PMid:34110953
Baack, Stefan. 2024. "A critical analysis of the largest source for generative ai training data: Common crawl". En Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 2199-2208. https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3659033
Bachelard, Gaston. 2004 [1949]. Le rationalisme appliqué. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernardette. 2000. L'Opinion publique et la science: à chacun son ignorance. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernardette. 2014. "The politics of buzzwords at the interface of technoscience, market and society: The case of "public engagement in science". Public Understanding of Science 23 (3): 238-253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662513515371 PMid:24495899
Bensaude-Vincent Bernardette y Vincent G. Dorthe. 2023. Les Sciences dans la mêlée. Pour une culture de la défiance. Paris: Seuil.
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2012. Science and the media: Alternative routes to scientific communications. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203064870 PMCid:PMC3387723
Bucchi, Massimiano y Brian Trench. 2014. "Science communication research: Themes and challenges". En Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, editado por Massimiano Bucchi y Brian Trench, 2nd edn., 1-14, Abbingdon, Oxon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203483794 PMCid:PMC4024745
Broks, Peter. 2006. Undertanding popular science, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Brown, Mark B. 2009. Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262013246.001.0001
Caballero, Beatriz. 2008. "La centralidad del concepto de delirio en el pensamiento de María Zambrano". Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 12: 93-110. https://doi.org/10.1353/hcs.0.0004
Callon Michel y Volodona Rabeharisoa. 2003. "Research 'in the Wild' and the Shaping of New Social Identities, Technology in Society". Studies in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) North and South 25 (2): 193-204. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-791X(03)00021-6
Callon Michel y Volodona Rabeharisoa. 2008. "The Growing Engagement of Emergent Concerned Groups in Political and Economic Life. Lessons from the French Association of Neuromuscular Disease Patients". Science, Technology, & Human Values 33 (2): 230-61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243907311264
Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes y Yannck Barthe. 2001. Agir dans un monde incertain. Essai sur la démocratie technique. Paris: Le Seuil.
Cameron, Sharon. 2003. "The practice of attention: Simone Weil's performance of impersonality". Critical Inquiry 29: 216-252. https://doi.org/10.1086/374026
Casas-Cortés, María Isabel, Michel Osterweil y Danna E. Powell. 2008. "Blurring boundaries: Recognizing knowledge practices in the study of social movements". Anthropological quarterly 81 (1):17-58. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2008.0006
Cobelas, Miguel Álvarez. 2016. Hoy las ciencias adelantan que es una barbaridad. La vida cotidiana del científico en España, Madrid: Ediciones Calle de las Aguas.
Coleman, Gabriella. 2013. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400845293
Colten, Craig E. y Peter N. Skinner. 1996. The Road to Love Canal: Managing Industrial Waste before EPA. Austin: Tex. https://doi.org/10.7560/711822
Conrad, Cathy C. y Krista G Hilchey. 2011. "A review of citizen science and community-based environmental monitoring: issues and opportunities". Environmental Monitoring and Assesment 176: 273-291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-010-1582-5 PMid:20640506
Conway, Janet. 2006. Praxis and Politics: Knowledge Production in Social Movements. New York: Routledge.
Corburn, Jason. 2005. Street Science. Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6494.001.0001 PMid:16338632
Corsín-Jiménez, Alberto y Adolfo Estalella. 2023. Free culture and the city: Hackers, commoners, and neighbors in Madrid, 1997-2017. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501767173.001.0001
Declaración de Budapest. 1999. "Declaración sobre la Ciencia y el uso del saber científico. Hungría: Conferencia Mundial sobre la Ciencia para el Siglo XXI: Un nuevo compromiso". Recuperado en octubre de 2025, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000116994_spa.
Demeritt, David. 2000. "The New Social Contract for Science: Accountability, Relevance,and Value in US and UK Science and Research Policy". Antipode 32: 308-329. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00137
Despret, Vinciane. 2002. Quand le loup habitera avec l'agneau. Paris: Les Empêcheurs du penser en ronde.
Despret, Vinciane y Stéphan Galetic. 2007. "Faire de James un 'lecteur anachronique' de Von Uexküll: Esquisse d'un perspectivisme radical". En Vie et experimentations: Peirce, James, Dewey, editado por Didier Debaise, 45-76, Paris: Vrin.
Dickson, David, Natasha Loder y Ehsan Masood. 1999. "Guidelines agreed for new social contract". Nature 400: 100. https://doi.org/10.1038/21963
D'Ignazio, Catherine, Isadora Cruxên, Helena S. Val, et al. 2022. "Feminicide and counterdata production: Activist efforts to monitor and challenge gender-related violence". Patterns 3 (7): 100530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2022.100530 PMid:35845842 PMCid:PMC9278506
Dinerstein, Ana Cecilia. 2015. The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America. The Art of Organizing Hope. London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316011 PMid:25287552
Epstein, Steven. 1995. "The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS, Activism and the Forging of Credibility in The Reform of Clinical Trials". Science, Technology and Human Values 20 (4): 408-437. https://doi.org/10.1177/016224399502000402 PMid:11653331
Epstein, Steven. 1996. Impure science: AIDS, activism and the politics of knowledge. Berkely: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520921252
Epstein, Steven. 2008. "Patient Groups and Health Movements". En The handbook of science and technology studies, editado por Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch y Judy Wajcman, 499-541, Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Eskelinen, Teppo, Keijo Lakkala, y Miikka Pyykkönen. 2020. "The Privatization and Recollectivization of Hope". En The Revival of Political Imagination: Utopia as Methodology, editado por Teppo Eskelinen, 37-53. New York: Zed Books. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350225633.ch.003
Fraisl, Dilek, Jillian Campbell, Linda See et al. 2020. "Mapping citizen science contributions to the UN sustainable development goals". Sustainability Science 15: 1735-1751. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00833-7
Garcés, Marina. 2023. El tiempo de la promesa. Barcelona: Anagrama.
Gibbons, Michael. 1999. "Science's new social contract with society". Nature 402: C81-C84. https://doi.org/10.1038/35011576 PMid:10591229
Gibbs, Lois. 2012. Love canal and the birth of the environmental health movement. Washington: Island Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.41003933
Gray, Jonathan, Danny Lämmerhirt y Liliana Bounegru. 2016. "Changing what counts: how can citizen-generated and civil society data be used as an advocacy tool to change official data collection?". SSRN 2742871. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2742871
Gunko, Rusian, Lauri Rapeli, Matias Scheinin, et al. 2022. "How accurate is citizen science? Evaluating public assessments of coastal water quality". Environmental Policy and Governance 32 (2): 149-157. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1975
Harman, Graham. 2014. Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p1ks
Herrando, Carmen. 2019. "La atención, corazón de la educación". Quién: revista de filosofía personalista 9: 103-117. https://doi.org/10.69873/aep.i9.147
Hess, David J. 2007. Alternative Pathways in Science and Technology: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hicks Anna, Jenni Barclay, Jason Chilvers et al. 2019. "Global mapping of citizen science projects for disaster risk reduction". Frontiers in Earth Science 7: 226. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2019.00226
Hoch, Dan & Tom Ferguson. 2005. "What I've Learned from E-Patients". PLoS Med 2 (8): e206. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020206 PMid:16060721 PMCid:PMC1182328
Irwin, Alan. 1995. Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development. London: Routledge.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2007. "Technologies of humility". Nature 450 (7166): 33-33. https://doi.org/10.1038/450033a PMid:17972866
Kelty, Christopher M. 2008. Two bits. The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham: Duke University. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822389002
Kullenberg, Chistopher y Dick Kasperowski. 2016. "What is citizen science? A scientometric meta-analysis". PLoS ONE 11: e0147152. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147152 PMid:26766577 PMCid:PMC4713078
Kurtz, Linda F. 1990. "The self-help movement". Social Work With Groups 13: 101-115. https://doi.org/10.1300/J009v13n03_11
LaDuke, Winona. 1999. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2000. "Enlightenment in an Imperial Context: Local Science in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Hispanic World". En Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, editado por Roy MacLeod. Osiris 15: 155-173. https://doi.org/10.1086/649324
Lafuente, Antonio. 2007. "Los cuatro entornos del procomún". Archipiélago 77-78: 15-22.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2012. "Modernización epistémica y sociedad expandida". En Educación expandida, editado por Rubén Diaz, 131- 150. Sevilla: Zemos98.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2020a. "20 años de la Declaración de Budapest sobre la ciencia". En Veinte años de la Declaración de Budapest sobre la Ciencia y el uso del saber científico, 5. Madrid: Fundación para el Conocimiento MADRI+D. https://www.academia.edu/44465037/20_a%C3%B1os_de_la_Declaraci%C3%B3n_de_Budapest_sobre_la_ciencia.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2020b. "Covid 19: la necesidad de un nuevo pacto social por la ciencia". The Conversation 27 de diciembre de 2020, https://theconversation.com/covid-19-la-necesidad-de-un-nuevo-pacto-social-por-la-ciencia-152391. https://doi.org/10.64628/AAO.yh7s7pqnu
Lafuente, Antonio. 2020c. "Abrir la ciencia para cambiar el mundo". International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace 7 (2): 52-67. https://doi.org/10.24908/ijesjp.v7i2.13724
Lafuente, Antonio. 2022. Itinerarios comunes. Laboratorios ciudadanos y cultura experimental. Barcelona: NED ediciones.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2024a. "La conexión escuela mundo". Espacios de Educación Superior, EsdeEs, https://www.espaciosdeeducacionsuperior.es/10/12/2024/la-conexion-escuela-mundo/.
Lafuente, Antonio. 2024b. Peras con manzanas. Cómo prototipar sin tener ni idea. Madrid: Experimenta.
Lafuente, Antonio y Adolfo Estalella. 2015."Ways of Science: Public, Open, and Commons". En Open Science, editado por Sarita Albagli, Maria Lucia Maciel y Alexandre Hannud Abdo, 27-58. Brasilia: IBICT - Rio de Janeiro: Unirio.
Lafuente, Antonio y Leoncio López-Ocón. 2006. "Scientific Traditions and Enlightenment Expeditions in Eighteenth-century Hispanic America". En Science in Latin America: A History, editado por Juan José Saldaña, 123-150. Austin: Texas University Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/712713-005 PMid:16337849
Lafuente Antonio y Joaquín Rodríguez-López. 2025. "La lengua (vernácula) en ciencia". En Uso y cuidado de la lengua española en ciencia, editado por Federico J. C-Soriguer y Antonio Diéguez, 115-128. Granada: Comares.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. "Which protocol for the new collective experiments". En Kultur im Experiment editado por Henning Schmidgen, Peter Geimer y Sven Dierig, 17-36. Berlin: Kadmos Verlag.
Lave, Rebecca, Philip Mirowski y Sam Randalls. 2010. "STS and Neoliberal Science". Social Studies of Science 40 (5): 659-675. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312710378549
Leach, Melissa, Ian Scoones & Brian Wynne. 2005. Science and Citizens: Globalization and the Challenge of Engagement. London: Zed Books. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350222458
López-Cerezo, José Antonio. 1999. "Los estudios de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad". Revista Iberoamericana de educación 20: 217-225. https://doi.org/10.35362/rie2001049
Lubchenco, Jane. 1997. "Entering the Century of the Environment: A New Social Contract for Science". Science 279: 491-497. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.279.5350.491
Lukyanenko, Roman, Jeffrey Parsons y Yolanda F. Wiersma. 2016. "Emerging Problems of Data Quality in Citizen Science". Conservation Biology 30 (3): 447-49. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12706 PMid:26892841
Mazur, Allan. 1984. "The journalist and technology: Reporting about Love Canal and Three Mile Island". Minerva 22: 45-66. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02207556 PMid:11611663
McCormick, Sabrina, Phil Brown y Stephen Zavestoski. 2003. "The Personal Is Scientific, the Scientific Is Political: The Public Paradigm of the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement". Sociological Forum 18 (4): 545-76. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SOFO.0000003003.00251.2f
Marres, Noortje. 2012. Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137029669 PMCid:PMC3626128
Mirowski, Philip. 2010. Science Mart TM, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nieto-Galan, Agustín. 2016. Science in the Public Sphere: A History of Lay Knowledge and Expertise. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315640747 PMid:28569700
Nowotny, Helga. 2003. "Democratising expertise and socially robust knowledge". Science and Public Policy 30: 151-6. https://doi.org/10.3152/147154303781780461
Nowotny, Helga, Peter Scott, y Michael Gibbons. 2001. Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Palm, Fedrik. 2021. "Working the Self: Truth-Telling in the Practice of Alcoholics Anonymous". Human Studies 44: 103-120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09569-w
Pasquinelli, Matteo. 2008. Animal spirits: A bestiary of the commons. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers.
Pelacho, Maite, Hannot Rodríguez, Fernando Broncano et al. 2021. "Science as a Commons: Improving the Governance of Knowledge Through Citizen Science". En The Science of Citizen Science, editado por Katrin Vohland, AnneLand-Zandstra, Luigi Ceccaroni et al. 57-78. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_4
Petersen, Carolyn, Robin R. Austin, Uba Backonja, et al. 2020. "Citizen science to further precision medicine: from vision to implementation". JAMIA Open 3 (1): 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooz060 PMid:32607481 PMCid:PMC7309265
Pirruccello, Anne. 1995. "Interpreting Simone Weil: Presence and Absence in Attention". Philosophy East and West 45 (1): 61-72. https://doi.org/10.2307/1399509
Raichvarg, Daniel y Jean Jacques. 1991. Savants et ignorants: Une histoire de la vulgarisation de la science. Paris: Seuil.
Ramachandran, Rasu, Anninhalli R. Vasavi, Anindya Sinha, y Roddam Narasimha. 2000. "Science in Society: A New Social Contract'-A Report on the Bangalore Symposium. Science". Technology and Society. 5(1): 93-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/097172180000500105
Ravetz, Jerome R. 1988. "A new social contract for science". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 8 (1): 20-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/027046768800800107
Reveley, James. 2015. "School-based mindfulness training and the economisation of attention: a Stieglerian view". Educational Philosophy and Theory 47: 804-821. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2014.914880
Rodríguez-Giralt, Israel, Isaac Marrero-Guillamón y Denise Milstein. 2018. "Reassembling activism, activating assemblages: an introduction". Social Movement Studies 17 (3): 257-268. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2018.1459299
Sánchez-Criado, Tomás. 2015. "Hacer cuerpo". Fuera de Clase (blog en Diagonal) 17 de marzo de 2105. https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/blogs/9225/30934.
Seguin, Eve & Lord Laurent-Olivier. 2023. "Bruno Latour's Science Is Politics By Other Means: Between Politics and Ontology". Perspectives on Science 31 (1): 9-39. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00579
Shapin, Steve. 1988. "Following scientists around". Social Studies of Science. 18 (3): 533-550. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003007
Shapin Steve y Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Shirk, Jennifer L., Heidi L. Ballard, Candie C. Wilderman, et al. 2012. "Public participation in scientific research: a framework for deliberate design". Ecology and Society 17 (2): 29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04705-170229
Slaughter, Shelia y Gary Rhoades. 2004. Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Markets, State and Higher Education. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. "A Cosmopolitical Proposal". En Making things public: atmospheres of democracy, editado por Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 994-1003, Cambridge, MA - Karlsruhe: MIT Press; ZKM - Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2011. Another science is possible! A plea for slow science. Brussels: Université Libre de Brussels.
Thompson, Peter y Slavoj Zizek. eds. 2014. The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia. Durhan: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv125jpgg
Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226817439.001.0001
Vohland, Katrin, Anne Land-Zandstra, Luigi Ceccaroni, et al. eds. 2021. The Science of Citizen Science. Cham, Switz.: Springer Natur. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4 PMid:34457323
Wark, McKenzie. 2004. A Hacker Manifesto, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674044845
White, William L. 2005. "Recovery: its history and renaissance as an organizing construct concerning alcohol and other drug problems". Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 23: 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1300/J020v23n01_02
Yeung, Shirley. 2007. "Working the program: Technologies of self and citizenship in Alcoholics Anonymous". NEXUS: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology 20 (1): 48-75. https://doi.org/10.15173/nexus.v20i1.209
Zambrano, María. 2011. El hombre y lo divino. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
© CSIC. Manuscripts published in both the print and online versions of this journal are the property of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.
All contents of this electronic edition, except where otherwise noted, are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. You may read the basic information and the legal text of the licence. The indication of the CC BY 4.0 licence must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.
Self-archiving in repositories, personal webpages or similar, of any version other than the final version of the work produced by the publisher, is not allowed.
