Page 65 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

064 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

interchangeably at home and abroad, but there is a lack of theoretical exploration from the
terminology. The author asserts that the concept of scientific crowdsourcing is the premise and
emphasis of successful citizen science projects. Therefore, scientific crowdsourcing can be used
as a theoretical lens of citizen science to analyze the concept. Additionally, the deconstruction of
scientific crowdsourcing types will contribute to the pattern design of citizen science projects.

2.1 The nature and core drivers of scientific crowdsourcing

Similar to traditional crowdsourcing activities, the nature of scientific crowdsourcing can also be
traced back to the open innovative concept. If the crowdsourcing model in the business environment
breaks through the organizational boundaries in the process of innovation formation and its
development, the scientific crowdsourcing model then breaks down the barriers among scientists,
research teams, research institutions and the general public in traditional environments, leading
scientific research out of the lab, and more volunteers therefore may contact, recognize, comprehend
and participate in scientific research. It promotes the intersecting and destructive innovation
among different scientific research teams in time and space dimensions, optimizes the allocation
of scientific research resources, verifies and develops the theory and practice of open innovation at
a larger social level, and thus produces more influential and popularizing social innovation effect.
Scientific crowdsourcing emphasizes the use of crowd wisdom and collective intelligence to solve
“difficult problems” in various professional disciplines or interdisciplinary fields and the public can
play different roles in scientific crowdsourcing activities, such as data collection, data reporting,
equipment sharing, participatory research design, collaborative information analysis, auxiliary
research and development and so on. Wechsler (2014) emphasizes the necessity of introducing the
crowdsourcing model into scientific research work, and points out that interdisciplinary research is
more appropriate to promote with scientific crowdsourcing paradigm.
Zhao and Zhu (2016) define the crowdsourcing model in previous studies, that is, it
highlights the characteristics of “task-driven, goal-oriented”. Similarly, in the case of scientific
crowdsourcing, this is perfectly true. Whether scientists or research teams propose tasks, or
scientific crowdsourcing platforms deploy and distribute tasks, as well as volunteers and public
participate in solving tasks, or research teams and related departments finally evaluate the task
completion, it can be obviously seen that the task, as the core attribute, runs through the whole
process of scientific crowdsourcing. Meanwhile, the goal of scientific crowdsourcing also needs to
be preset before the implementation of the activity and needs constantly improving in the process
of implementation. In particular, how to guarantee the synchronous development and achievement
of scientific research goals, social goals and individual goals is the key to the implementation of
scientific crowdsourcing activities. In view of the core driving factors of scientific crowdsourcing,
the author holds that there are three main forces. Firstly, in terms of mass participation, time
available and ability to participate constitute the source of the organic growth of scientific