Open Access Citizen Science Projects: a (non) reality in Portugal

Abstract

Citizen Science, as a principle underlying Open Science, presupposes the involvement of citizens and society in the use, scrutiny and production of science, and is characterized by the participation of amateurs or non-scientists in the construction of scientific knowledge, enhanced by the growing use of information and communication technologies and social networks. The data collected and the metadata resulting from these projects are naturally made publicly available and published in open access. From the information collected on different Internet platforms, projects were identified in Portugal, in the areas of Social Sciences and Humanities and Natural Sciences, which are developed according to the collaborative spirit and involvement of local communities and citizens in general. The aim, in addition to identifying these projects, is to analyze, from a quantitative point of view, Open Access practices, namely, the provision and publication of open access content, open research data access, the existence of digital repositories, data management and participation in international projects. It is concluded that there are few truly Citizen Science projects, although the collaboration of communities and citizens in the collaborative construction of knowledge is growing, and even rarer are those that make data available in open access.