Visualization of Citizen Science Volunteers´ Behaviors with Data from Usage Logs

Author

Morais, Alessandra Marli M. ; Santos, Rafael D. C. ; Raddick, M. Jordan

Author_Institution

Nat. Inst. for Space Res. (INPE), São José dos Campos, Brazil

Volume

17

Issue

4

fYear

2015

fDate

July-Aug. 2015

Firstpage

42

Lastpage

50

Abstract

Web-based citizen science projects collect logs of interactions between volunteers and project websites. In this article, the authors present visualization techniques that can be used to infer volunteer behavior in such projects, using the Galaxy Zoo astronomy citizen science project as a test case. This information could be used to shed light on why volunteers join or leave a project-a greater understanding of these factors could help citizen science project developers better recruit and retain their volunteers.

Keywords

Internet; behavioural sciences computing; data analysis; data visualisation; Galaxy Zoo astronomy citizen science project; Web-based citizen science projects; citizen science volunteers behavior visualization; usage logs data; Collaboration; Data collection; Data visualization; Object recognition; Research and development; Visualization; Web servces; citizen science; clustering; log analysis; scientific computing; visualization;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computing in Science & Engineering

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1521-9615

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MCSE.2015.86

Filename

7131399