Page 59 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

A preliminary exploration on citizen science projects

based on scientific crowdsourcing perspectives:
Conceptualization, pattern design and research

opportunities 〇a ①

ZHAO Yuxiang 〇b *
School of Economics & Management, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing 210094, China

Abstract
The past ten years have witnessed the development of Citizen Science from an emerging concept into a
mode of an Internet enabled mass participation and online collaboration. However, due to the diversity
of the subjects of citizen science projects, the universality and heterogeneity of the participants, the
complexity and dynamics of the implementation process, there are still numerous open issues less
addressed in its operation mechanism and management mode. Based on the two dimensions of scientific
crowdsourcing type and citizen science development environment, this study asserts that the business
model of citizen science projects can be effectively constructed and divided. To drive, manage and
maintain the development of citizen science projects with the idea of “institutional view”, joining
the entity of third-party organization can reconstruct the operation mode of citizen science projects.
Based on the Library and Information Science, citizen science projects of digital humanities can be
explored in depth, and the follow-up work can be carried out from aspects such as the utilization of
special collections, the construction of digital humanities platforms, the management and protection of
scientific research data, as well as the user motivation and training.

Keywords
Scientific crowdsourcing, Citizen science projects, Pattern design, Digital humanities, Library and
Information Science

0 Introduction

In 2015, the State Council’s No.32 document, Opinions of the State Council on Policies and
Measures to Vigorously Promote Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation, pointed out that
promoting mass entrepreneurship and innovation and stimulating the wisdom and creativity
of hundreds of millions of people are the source of driving force for economic and social
development. In recent years, crowdsourcing has developed well in a great many fields, especially

① Special contribution for the Youth Academic Forum sponsored by this Journal.
This article is an outcome of the youth project “Design and Management of Crowdsourcing Mode Based on Actor Network Theory
Framework” (No.71403119) supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.
* Correspondence should be addressed to ZHAO Yuxiang, Email: yxzhao@vip.163.com, ORCID：0000-0001-9281-3030