I have been a member of the Zooniverse citizen science project team since the launch of the first Galaxy Zoo site in 2007. Zooniverse is a collection of online projects that allow volunteers from all over the world to contribute to meaningful, cutting- scientific research. Zooniverse volunteers have contributed to more than one hundred published studies – the project maintains a growing list at Zooniverse Publications.

My work with Zooniverse has led me to become an expert in understanding citizen scientists – who they are, why they choose to volunteer, and what they gain from their participation.

Publications

Prather, E. E., Cormier, S., Wallace, C. S., Lintott, C., Raddick, M. J., & Smith, A. 2013. Measuring the conceptual understandings of citizen scientists participating in Zooniverse projects: A first approach. Astronomy Education Review, 12(1), 010109, doi:10.3847/AER2013002.

Raddick, M. J., Bracey, G., Gay, P. L., Lintott, C. J., Cardamone, C., Murray, P., Schawinski, K., Szalay, A. S., & Vandenberg, J. 2013. Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of citizen scientists. Astronomy Education Review, 12(1), 010106, doi:10.3847/AER2011021.

Reed, J., Raddick, M. J., Lardner, A., & Carney, K. 2013. An exploratory factor analysis of motivations for participating in Zooniverse, a collection of citizen science projects. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Ed. Sprague, R. H. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 610-619. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2013.85.

Lintott, C., Schawinski, K., Bamford, S., Slosar, A., Land, K., Thomas, D., Edmondson, E., Masters, K., Nichol, R. C., Raddick, M. J., Szalay, A., Andreescu, D., Murray, P., & Vandenberg, J. 2011. Galaxy Zoo 1: Data release of morphological classifications for nearly 900 000 galaxies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 410(1), 166-178, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17432.x.

Fortson, L., Masters, K., Nichol, R., Borne, K. D., Edmondson, E. M., Lintott, C., Raddick, J., Schawinski, K., & Wallin, J. 2011. Galaxy Zoo: Morphological classification and citizen science. In Advances in Machine Learning and Data Mining for Astronomy, eds. Way, M. J., Scargle, J. D., Ali, K. M., Srivastava, A. N. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Available via Google Books.

Raddick, M. J., Bracey, G., Gay, P. L., Lintott, C. J., Murray, P., Schawinski, K., Szalay, A. S., & Vandenberg, J. 2010. Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the motivations of citizen science volunteers. Astronomy Education Review, 9(1), 010103-1, doi:10.3847/AER2009036.

Raddick, M. J., Bracey, G., Carney, K., Gyuk, G., Borne, K., Wallin, J., & Jacoby, S. 2009. Citizen science: Status and research directions for the coming decade. Astro2010: The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, Position Papers, 46. Available from the National Academies (PDF).

Lintott, C. J., Schawinski, K., Slosar, A., Land, K., Bamford, S., Thomas, D., Raddick, M. J., Nichol, R. C., Szalay, A., Andreescu, D., Murray, P., & Vandenberg, J. 2008. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 389(3), 1179-1189, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13689.x.