Imagine that all the little things you observe on a daily basis - your daily commute to work, the trees in your street, or the way rain collects on the road - could contribute to bettering your neighbourhood. That's exactly what communiMap - a new Citizen Science project running on the SPOTTERON Plaform aims to do. Led by the University of Glasgow'...

One of the most important aspects of Citizen Science is recognizing that participants voluntarily invest their time and effort into contributing to scientific projects—without compensation. While their passion for nature and curiosity about the environment drive participation, another crucial motivator is often overlooked: the desire to engage and ...

The European Space Agency and its new way of communicating with the public The climate crisis was one of the thematic focal points at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023, which took place in early September. The European Space Agency, whose observational data provides the basis for national and international efforts to predict future changes in clima...

For our participation in Citizen Science conferences, we have designed one of our this year's conference posters about the Community Effects in Citizen Science Apps and the effects that science communication and interaction have on a Citizen Science project's success. The poster was accepted and presented on several occasions, such as the Aust...

IMPETUS, a Europe-wide project to promote Citizen Science, recently awarded Citizen Science projects and published the selected award winners of the European Union Price for Citizen Science. Among them are two Citizen Science Apps running on the SPOTTERON App platform: Roadkill by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Scien...

The Citizen Science Award 2023, organized by OeAD, is currently taking place in Austria from April 1st to July 31st. Those who participate in one of the eight projects, will have the chance to win and be part of the Young Science Conference in October 2023. We are proud to announce that two of our project partners belong to the ...

User-to-user communication and project-to-user communication are essential parts of modern interactive Citizen Science. In the new platform update, we extend the already present features in all Apps on the SPOTTERON platform with another significant upgrade: User Message Boards. Exchanging messages, enabling discussion Being able to contact each ot...

One of the often very time-intensive tasks when running a Citizen Science project is the validation of the gathered data. Is the user-provided information correct? Does the species classification work out? Is the location correct? The complexity of this task grows with the success of a Citizen Science project. When hundreds of new contribution...

The new "Community Data Validation" Feature on the SPOTTERON Platform allows Citizen Scientists to be more deeply involved in the scientific process. The feature update in the ClimateWatch App by Earthwatch Australia allows users not only to submit observations but also to assess the accuracy and support the observations of...

Imagine a Citizen Scientist asking a question inside your project's App. What if a reply directly reaches the user on the smartphone with a beep as soon it is posted? This next level of immediacy is now a reality with the new "User Mention" feature for all Apps on the SPOTTERON platform. The new functionality enables direct and personal commun...

It has been a busy year here at SPOTTERON. Despite the ongoing global pandemic, we are happy that a new platform generation is finally ready for your Citizen Science Apps! After months of building up the groundwork, thorough evaluation, testing and improving, we are excited to present you the new and most extensive Citizen Science Platform we've ev...

This year was one of the most difficult ones for all of us, with the Corona Virus pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing. But nevertheless, 2020 also brought good things and amazing new Citizen Science projects on the SPOTTERON platform. We loved the exciting work tasks and the diverse project topics which we have been allowed to design and develop in this strange year.

On this year's ECSA Citizen Science conference, we have been invited to hold a workshop on technology and the practice of design for Citizen Science. Since the conference moved completely online (read more about our experiences here in the Blog), we filled the session together with Jessie L. Oliver, who shared her research on how to design fun citizen science tech to find a sneaky Australia bird species (i.e. Eastern bristlebirds). Citizen Science is used and what technology implementation means for Citizen Science Apps and interactive online tools. Thanks for inviting us to be part of that session!

From 6th to 10th of September, the European Citizen Science Conference ECSA 2020 took place in the virtual space. Since we have been designing and developing the SPOTTERON Citizen Science platform for apps and interactive toolkits since 2014 already, it was not our first conference on Citizen Science - at least for Philipp, who is quite a regular in terms of visiting conferences. But this year, things rarely have been normal, and so the virtual event of ECSA 2020 was something new to all of us. Here are some first impressions by 2 conference newbies and a regular:

Our Citizen Science partner "Konrad Lorenz Research Center", running the Citizen Science App "Forschen im Almtal" on the SPOTTERON Platform and initiator of "NestCams", our first collaboration with Zooniverse, started a great initiative. At their research station, they host a colony of Northern Bald Ibis, amazing birds which you can also observe in the "Forschen I'm Almtal" Citizen Science App.

On Saturday last week, I was on a walk outside to get a little bit of sunshine. But since Citizen Science became a significant thing in my life, these rounds are not only for stretching my legs. With the smartphone in my pocket and a bunch of Citizen Science Apps installed, every walk feels like an adventure.

2019 has been an amazing year. The SPOTTERON Citizen Science platform evolved into an even more professional solution for participatory science applications. In summer, we organized the "SPOTTERON Feature Ecosystem" into various thematic packages for a better overview of what the platform brings to every new Citizen Science project. Furthermore, we were able to welcome new project partners from all across Europe, Australia and the United States of America on SPOTTERON. 

During the iDiv Summer School 2019 "Citizen Science – Innovation in Open Science, Society, and Policy" in Leipzig, Germany, we co-created the concept for a free Citizen Science video called "Explore Citizen Science", which you can download and use freely.

During summer, many conferences on Citizen Science and other events are happening. To spread the word about Citizen Science and share our experience in creating interactive Citizen Science apps, we had quite a schedule this year..

The new platform version 2.7. is going to bring a complete overhaul of the ranking panel with advanced community leaderboards and more statistic tool for all Citizen Science apps on the SPOTTERON platform.