search

obi-ontology / obi

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations
http://obi-ontology.org
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
74 stars 24 forks source link

NTR: citizen science design #962

Open TrisSN opened 5 years ago

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

NTR: citizen science design definition: scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or nonprofessional) scientists. [Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science] synonyms: community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring, networked science

Public-Health-Bioinformatics commented 5 years ago

Question for you - were you thinking of placing "citizen science design" under 'plan specification' > 'study design' or under 'protocol' or another category? I and another OBI curator were wondering if the term was focused more on the method of data collection specified in the protocol of a study design? I would think study design itself would be at a more abstract level than the protocol level?

Or more likely this is specifying the investigators of the study? At moment OBI doesn't really have a class of investigator types - like academic agency, commercial agency, governmental agency, citizen science collective. Perhaps we need one?

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

It's a difficult question. On the one hand, citizen science is a tool used to achieve your objectives, so it's lower down than study design, but, on the other hand, if you know you're going to need to crowd-source your data collection, then you will be on your mind as you design the study.

My preference would be to have it at the study design level. I think the protocols would then include the instructions given to the volunteers who participate in the citizen science projects.

I don't think it fits well with investigators though: the humans in citizen science projects are usually doing very machine-like jobs. Wouldn't 'investigators' apply more to the people who design and implement the study?

bpeters42 commented 5 years ago

We have been doing much better with terms like this when being more specific. For example, 'crowd sourced data generation' is a term that I think we can define rather accurately. On the other hand, asking about amateur vs. professional scientist isn't really helpful. If there is a high school project in which a group of students conducts an observational study on bird migration patterns or whatever, is that now 'citizen science'? And if the same study is conducted by students in college? Is it about being paid or not, and if I make an unpaid study pro bono, it becomes citizen science? (worse, as I am not a citizen where I live, what does that mean?)

On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 12:21 PM TrisSN notifications@github.com wrote:

It's a difficult question. On the one hand, citizen science is a tool used to achieve your objectives, so it's lower down than study design, but, on the other hand, if you know you're going to need to crowd-source your data collection, then you will be on your mind as you design the study.

My preference would be to have it at the study design level. I think the protocols would then include the instructions given to the volunteers who participate in the citizen science projects.

I don't think it fits well with investigators though: the humans in citizen science projects are usually doing very machine-like jobs. Wouldn't 'investigators' apply more to the people who design and implement the study?

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/obi-ontology/obi/issues/962#issuecomment-425155372, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANN9IuyErfHPF9aUZn05Whago_kjnugjks5ufPsMgaJpZM4WX1Se .

-- Bjoern Peters Professor La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology 9420 Athena Circle La Jolla, CA 92037, USA Tel: 858/752-6914 Fax: 858/752-6987 http://www.liai.org/pages/faculty-peters

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

Aha! 'crowd-sourced data generation' would actually work really well. Should I make a separate NTR for that, or is it actionable from here?

jamesaoverton commented 5 years ago

Here on this issue is fine. As always we'll need a definition, synonyms, and parent. Thanks!

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

NTR: crowd-sourced data generation Definition: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers [source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing] Synonyms: citizen science data collection, voluntary data generation Parent: planned process OBI:0000011

bpeters42 commented 5 years ago

Discussed on the call 10/8. This is much better! But it seems that some of the terms in the definition go beyond 'data generation'. Could we be even more specific? Maybe with some examples of usage that are intended to be covered (and those that are not, for example fund raising)?

'crowd sourced data generation'= A planned process in which a large group of people provide information, such as the answer to problem task.'

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

Had a search for some concise list of examples on the net, but didn't uncover anything. Here's my free-text: 'Examples include crowd-sourced image annotation projects, surveys, questionnaires, but exclude fund-raising.'

bpeters42 commented 5 years ago

Those examples work well. Are you okay with the revised definition suggested above? Repeating here:

'crowd sourced data generation'= A planned process in which a large group of people provide information, such as the answer to problem task.'

TrisSN commented 5 years ago

Yes, that looks good (apart from typo on last phrase: 'a problem task')

jamesaoverton commented 5 years ago

Action Item: James will add this term to OBI.