Rethinking Data: Building Collaborative Relationships in Citizen Science
Guest post and video by Sadie Coffin, 2025 Association for Advancing Participatory Science and NASA Fellow. Originally published in the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences blog on July 24, 2025.
In this video, I share three big ideas from the NASA Citizen Science Leaders Series about how thoughtful data practices can support stronger, more inclusive, and more impactful science. These takeaways emphasize that it’s not just about collecting good data, it’s about making that data usable, sharable, and meaningful beyond your immediate project.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; there are already great tools and examples out there to help project leaders set their data and participants up for success. Below are the talks and resources I referenced in the video:
Keynote by Andrea Grover, ”Citizen Science Data: Quality is Just the Start”
Andrea encourages project leaders to ask: what might your users want to do with your data? By engaging and consulting with potential users and describing your data with them in mind, you can discover unexpected audiences and expand the impact of your project. Good documentation and metadata make your data easier to understand, reuse, and build on.
Open Science for Life Sciences Analysis Working Groups (OSDR AWGs)
This event offers a great example of what can happen when data and workflows are openly shared. The working groups show how collaborative infrastructure and openness can lead to collective discovery, community learning, and scientific acceleration.
Steve Crawford: Creating and Sharing Open Science Data Management Plans (OSDMPs)
Steve Crawford highlights how public Data Management Plans (DMPs) can help:
Increase transparency in the scientific process
Support reproducibility of science and open workflows
Lower barriers to entry for new participants
Help leaders and participants strategically mange and share data