They count butterflies and birds, assist in archaeological excavations, or collect data on their diet and mobility behavior: In a wide variety of research projects, Austrian universities rely on the contributions of citizen scientists – that is, members of the general public who help to generate scientific knowledge through their voluntary work.

Citizen science is an exciting way to experience research up close – and by working together with people outside the university, scientists can explore new ways to collect data, evaluate observations, or even develop new ideas.

They bundle their activities in the field of citizen science on the “Österreich forscht” online portal and present new research projects to citizens who might be interested in participating. WU has also joined the Citizen Science Network Austria and is now part of this growing community of universities and research institutions that want to make science accessible to everyone.

Management science: Breaking new ground for citizen scientists

It was Jurgen Willems, professor of public management and governance at the Department of Management, who took the initiative for WU to join. “Compared to other disciplines, such as biology, citizen science is still not very widespread in the social sciences. And in the field of management science in particular, we are entering uncharted territory.”

This means that when it comes to putting citizen science into practice in this area, there is room for creativity in selecting data collection and analysis approaches from the growing body of citizen science literature and adapting them to a new context. In the coming months, Jurgen Willems, together with his department colleagues Kai U. Klein and Paul Rameder, aims to advance the first research project with the help of citizen science: the Volunteer Environment Check.

In this FWF-funded project, which has been running for two years, the researchers investigate how non-profit organizations manage their volunteer helpers. “When organizations use volunteers, it is crucial to coordinate their work in a meaningful and effective way,” explains Kai U. Klein. “After all, these people are gifting their time to an organization and it’s in everyone’s interest that this time is used efficiently.”

Crowdsourcing, participatory science, collaborative science?

A pilot project with 25 different non-profit organizations is currently underway, where selected volunteers participate as citizen scientists. In a first step, these volunteers are helping to collect real-life empirical data and examine the management practices and coordination processes of their NPOs and communities in detail. This method of data collection by volunteers is also known as crowdsourcing or citizen sourcing, and it is considered the most straightforward form of citizen science.

However, the project goes two steps further: After the data collection phase, the results are discussed with the organizations in interactive workshops. In a participatory process, ideas are gathered to improve volunteer coordination – an example of another citizen science approach called participatory science.

In a third step, the designated citizen scientists will be trained to independently continue and document the research-based analysis of management practices in their organizations and communities. This type of citizen science is called collaborative science – the actual involvement of volunteers in the process of generating scientific knowledge.

“Ideally, everybody wins in the end,” says Kai U. Klein. “The volunteers can contribute in new ways and give meaningful feedback, the NPOs can improve their volunteer coordination – and we researchers obtain better data and more reliable results.”

The pilot study with formal NPOs is expected to be completed by the end of the summer 2025. “If everything goes according to plan, we can easily scale up this method and focus on informal volunteer work, which has hardly been researched so far,” says Jurgen Willems from WU’s Management Department.

“In any case, we will gain exciting insights into how citizen science can be carried out in the social sciences – and I am already looking forward to hearing the ideas of other WU researchers in this field.” There is good reason to hope that many more research projects with volunteer participation will follow this first WU project as part of the Citizen Science Network Austria.