Citizen Science in the Social Sciences and Humanities

<p>The aim of the study was to develop a more integrated understanding of the extent and ways the social sciences and humanities (SSH) are represented and dealt with in current citizen science (CS) practice. To achieve this, a meta-synthesis methodology was adopted to identify and examine all related cases reported in the research literature.&nbsp;</p> <p>Five research questions were formulated as follows:</p> <p>1) What methodological approaches and roles of citizens are used by CS projects and activities claiming to pertain to SSH?</p> <p>2) What disciplinary fields within SSH do these CS projects encompass and what do diverse interdisciplinary synergies piece together?</p> <p>3) What are the SSH topics that have engrossed or attracted most of the interest in CS practice so far?</p> <p>4) What purposes are defined to incorporate SSH in CS projects? and</p> <p>5) What are the benefits of citizen-generated data?&nbsp;</p> <p>To select relevant papers&nbsp;two of the largest databases were opted: a) Clarivate Analytics Core Collection (Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index, Arts &amp; Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceeding Citation Index - Science Edition &amp; Social Science &amp; Humanities Edition), and b) EBSCOhost research databases.</p> <p>A combination of two keywords only was used as subject terms/topics (e.g. citizen science AND social sciences &gt; TS=(citizen AND science) AND TS=(natural AND sciences)).</p> <p>Search results were retrieved twice, in October 2018 and in January 2019. At the pre-identification stage, 2763 records were retrieved. At the identification stage, 1244 full-text papers were included in the sample. At the screening stage,&nbsp;344 full-text papers in English, Spanish and French were identified and submitted to a preliminary meta-synthesis.&nbsp;In total, 62 papers were selected for being relevant and providing most of the data needed.</p>