Discussion on Citizen Science Terminology by The Citizen's Panel of the University of Turku 17 April 2026

Citizen science refers broadly to the active engagement of the public in scientific research tasks (e.g., Vohland et al., 2021). In research literature (e.g., Eitzel et al., 2017, Pelacho et al., 2021), discipline-specific differences in terminology with citizen science and related participatory research methods have been identified; for example, citizen science has its roots in the natural sciences, whereas co-research has a background in the social sciences and humanities. In English, the most established term, citizen science, has been adopted by the European Commission (Haklay et al., 2021) and the European Citizen Science Association ECSA (Haklay et al., 2020). Related English terms include community science and participatory science, which avoid some of the unwanted connotations associated with the word “citizen” (Pelacho et al., 2021). The Citizen Panel of the University of Turku discussed Finnish citizen science terminology from the participants’ perspective on 17 April 2026. Ten panelists from Southwest Finland and the Satakunta region participated, together with doctoral researcher Jonni Karlsson from Åbo Akademi University. Citizen panelists provided informed consent for the discussion results to be summarized and published openly on Zenodo. The first draft of the summary in Finnish was reviewed by the Citizen Panelists before translation and publication. The Dataset includes Summary from the Discussion in English Summary from the Discussion in Finnish The Discussion Material and Invitation sent to the Citizen Panelists (available only in Finnish) Data Description in English