MAMBO's Ethical advisor Jes Harfeld (Aalborg University) facilitated an online seminar on citizen science ethics on March 12, 2025, with the aim of learning about and reflecting on ethics in citizen science, stakeholder engagement, and app development and testing. The seminar was open to all members of the MAMBO project and invitations were also extended to stakeholders outside the project.
At the seminar, the EA had invited associate professor of philosophy, Per Sandin, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) to give a talk in order to shed light on some of the topics within citizen science ethics and facilitate discussion among MAMBO project participants. Sandin has worked extensively on citizen science ethics. See more here: https://internt.slu.se/en/cv-originals/per-sandin/
The talk was titled Shifting Roles and Permeable Boundaries – Responsibility and Credit in Citizen Science and focused on the ethical dimensions of citizen science with an emphasis on responsibility, credit, and the blurring of boundaries between professional scientists and volunteers. Sandin first introduced the central research ethics principles: Truth (quality and fraud issues), Fairness (treatment of colleagues and research subjects), and Wisdom (wider societal implications). He positioned these principles within the research process of planning, performing, and reporting. Following this, he described citizen science as a polysemous (multi-meaning) concept, generally referring to projects with significant involvement of non-professional volunteers. Two traditions exist: a bottom-up democratized model and a top-down contributory model. Sandin highlighted several ethical challenges:
- Data quality and integrity
- Risks of de-professionalisation versus widening inclusivity
- Permeable boundaries between researchers and research persons
- Lack of comprehensive guidelines, described as an 'ethics gap'
- Legal uncertainties varying across countries
- Unfulfilled democratic potential of citizen science
- Social disparities in participation (gender, age, socioeconomic)
A key dilemma is whether citizen scientists should be treated as research participants (raising requirements for ethical review and data protection) or as researchers (raising questions of responsibility and credit). Lessons can, according to Sandin, be drawn from participatory research traditions. Recognition of contributions is central to ethical citizen science. Authorship, as one of the most significant forms of recognition, is often inaccessible to citizen scientists under current guidelines. Existing authorship frameworks, such as the Vancouver guidelines, tend to exclude citizen contributors despite their meaningful involvement. Sandin argued that this exclusion warrants reconsideration of authorship norms. Drawing from the CLEAR Lab’s care work and ideas of equity in authorship (Liboiron et al. 2017) he underscored the value of recognising non-traditional contributions such as logistical, emotional, and maintenance roles. He proposed seven heuristic rules:
- Respect existing guidelines where possible
- Ensure no one fulfilling authorship criteria is excluded
- Use structured resources to specify roles
- Learn from neighbouring disciplines
- Apply a wide conception of contributions
- Credit groups collectively when appropriate
- When in doubt, be generous toward citizen contributors
The presentation concluded with insights from the ongoing project 'Research ethics for citizen science' (2020–2024), emphasising the need for more nuanced ethical frameworks and recognition practices in citizen science. Publications from this project contribute to debates on principlism, credit allocation, and authorship in citizen science (Baard and Sandin, 2022).
