- Convenors:
-
Danjuma Saidu
(Federal University Lokoja)
Fatima Momohjimoh (University of Nigeria, Nsukka)
Nneka Oseji (Federal University Lokoja)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- L9
- Sessions:
- Thursday 5 March, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract
This panel explores how inclusive information management can make citizen science more equitable, focusing on data ethics, community knowledge, and tools that bridge the gap between marginalized voices and mainstream scientific and policy systems.
Description
From Margins to Metadata: Rethinking Information Management for Equitable Citizen Science explores how information is managed in citizen science projects and how these practices can either include or exclude voices from the periphery, such as rural communities, Indigenous groups, and underrepresented populations. As citizen science grows in importance for addressing environmental, social, and health challenges, the way data is collected, organized, validated, and shared becomes a critical issue of equity.
This panel brings together scholars, librarians, technologists, and community leaders to examine innovative approaches to information management that center fairness, cultural respect, and inclusiveness. Topics will include ethical data governance, participatory archiving, multilingual and culturally aware information systems, and tools that make citizen science data useful for local action and global policy. The panel will also address the tension between standardized scientific metadata and the rich, diverse forms of community knowledge that do not always fit formal systems.
By asking how citizen science information flows from the margins to decision-makers, and who controls that flow, the panel challenges participants to rethink conventional models of knowledge production. It invites conversation on how technology, design, and ethical frameworks can support more just and resilient citizen science practices that truly bridge the centre and the periphery.
This session is relevant to anyone interested in inclusive knowledge systems, data justice, environmental monitoring, and the future of participatory research in a globally connected world.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Thursday 5 March, 2026, -Short Abstract
Citizen science platforms govern knowledge production through embedded design choices, yet lack tools to examine these power dynamics. This paper presents SEXTANT, a model integrating knowledge commons, infrastructure studies, and data ethics to analyze platform governance.
Abstract
Digital infrastructures in citizen science are commonly treated as neutral conduits, yet design choices about licenses, APIs, privacy settings, and data flows actively structure who controls knowledge, who accesses it, and under what conditions. These embedded decisions shape power distribution among contributors, researchers, and platform operators, often invisibly. Current scholarship critiques platform politics but lacks systematic tools for analyzing and comparing governance across different systems.
This paper introduces the SEXTANT Governance Model, synthesizing knowledge commons theory, infrastructure studies, knowledge management, and reflexive data governance instruments. The model maps three action arenas where governance is contested: Ownership (rights and obligations over data and tools), Sharing (technical and policy conditions governing data circulation), and Accountability (mechanisms ensuring transparency, consent, and reciprocity). Within these arenas, platforms occupy three fluid positions: Enabler (expanding opportunities through open configurations), Mediator (balancing competing interests through conditional access), and Gatekeeper (concentrating control through restrictive defaults).
Grounded in three years of action research within the EU-funded Cos4Cloud project, including participant observation across nine citizen observatories, content analysis of platform policies, and longitudinal case studies, SEXTANT translates abstract governance critiques into actionable analysis. The model provides researchers, platform developers, and funders with vocabulary and diagnostic tools to map power distribution, identify imbalances, and negotiate fairer governance arrangements. SEXTANT provides a flexible analytical approach to understand how citizen science platforms shape and structure knowledge governance.
Short Abstract
ECODOC is studying how metadata for scientific data should be designed in a participatory manner, as it connects the narratives of scientists and non-specialist audiences to improve access to data.
Abstract
Academic circles are increasingly calling for openness in science, in the name of integrity and dialogue between science and society (Mikou, 2023). Policies promoting open data are reflected in repositories, standards (FAIR), and management plans (Vitari & Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2024). However, these initiatives are primarily aimed at scientific efficiency rather than mediation with citizens. This raises the question of the conditions for making data truly accessible and usable by non-specialists.
This is the challenge of the ECODOC project, a citizen science project that aims to design a device for accessing data produced by forest ecology research for a lay audience. Opening up to the general public requires specific work on metadata and descriptions to enable understanding of the projects, navigation of the documents, and manipulation of the data. Designing such a system amounts to establishing a diplomacy of data and metadata, based on listening to and negotiating the narratives of science reception.
Metadata is not limited to technical descriptors: it connects and guides uses. Their choice must integrate the games of narration and reformulation of scientific discourse (Pétroff, 1984), in order to build a participatory mediation framework (Boyd, 2019). Our methodology thus brings together researchers and citizens to produce scientific narratives (relation-narration) and collectively deduce metadata (relation-description).
This approach reveals that scientific narratives generate varied relational systems, requiring multiple metadata. The device then becomes a sensitive object of mediation, working on the legibility, circulation, and aesthetics of science (Rancière, 2000).
Short Abstract
We introduce a privacy centric data pipeline that allows communities to share data collected with low-cost sensor networks, while preserving data ownership and control as data originators. This workflow puts the user choice first, and is implemented as a demonstrator within the CitiObs project.
Abstract
Citizen Science initiatives using low-cost sensors often store data in online data platforms, which generally offer functionalities such as APIs to access sensor data. To facilitate the agreement between Citizen Science initiatives (as data producers) and potential data users, while preserving their control over what data is shared, we introduce a data pipeline involving real-time data forwarding with private data streams. These data streams are based on MQTT, a popular Internet of Things (IoT) messaging stack, using encrypted data channels, and created on demand by the individuals collecting environmental data. Data consumers can subscribe to these data streams only if the data creators have generated and shared a secret key-pair, which is then used to access the data streams on a centralized data broker in JSON format. This workflow is currently being demonstrated as part of the CitiObs project in 35 cities across Europe, using SmartCitizen devices to store data in the SmartCitizen Platform where they can choose to enable data forwarding. During CitiObs, users can choose to send data to a data platform owned by NILU as project coordinator. Data is then quality controlled, and made available in a standardized format via OGC standard STAplus. Data producers can choose other destinations, which effectively changes the data format in which this is shared, while keeping its content, enhancing interoperability. Data licenses, vocabulary definitions as well as sensor datasheets are included in the payloads shared across platforms, supporting the implementation of FAIR and CARE data principles.
Short Abstract
ScienceUs project proposed to create a network of citizen science projects focusing on climate change adaptation. A scaling up is proposed to 5 dedicated projects, implying to develop data management strategy based on the Open Science standards including the data ethic.
Abstract
The ScienceUs project aims to scale up participatory science initiatives through a dedicated “Upscale Academy” that provides training opportunities and hosts internal networking events. Within this methodology, ethical data management is considered at every stage of the scaling-up process.
We believe that participatory science projects can be strengthened by adopting research data management practices inspired by the Open Science framework. This means that Open Science principles, especially following the FAIR principles for project data, should be embedded to ensure ethics, integrity, and reliability of the information produced—particularly the data that will be shared and reused.
However, this is only the first step. The approach must also emphasize scaling up in terms of stakeholder engagement, especially by fostering storytelling grounded in research evidence.
We will illustrate this approach through a sensitization program carried out with five projects selected for the Flourish phase of ScienceUs : CoRe-ACTS, The Future is Climate, Blue-Green Tops, Acqua Sorgente, and Alleviating Energy Poverty.
Finally, we will present a perspective on scientific scaling-up and offer recommendations to enable the effective reuse of project-generated data within research.