Illustration: Bodara

is the number of scholarly articles that the sociologist Nicki Lisa Cole and a team at the Know Center in Graz, Austria, have found on the societal impact of citizen science. For open access, open code and open science, only 33 articles offer evidence of a similar impact. Where open access makes research results freely accessible, citizen science truly opens up the scientific process to a broader public, says Cole. This in turn expands people’s knowledge about scientific findings and promotes a positive attitude towards research. Nevertheless, she says, “there is sometimes a lack of respect for Citizen Science data […] in the policymaking process”.