Measuring epistemic success of a biodiversity citizen science program: A citation study

RESEARCH ARTICLE Measuring epistemic success of a biodiversity citizen science program: A citation study Baptiste BedessemID1*, Romain Julliard2, Eleonora Montuschi1 1 Dipartimento di Filosofia e beni culturali, Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia, Italy, 2 CESCO, Muse´um National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France * baptiste.bedessemp@gmail.com Abstract This paper offers a comparative evaluation of the scientific impact of a citizen science pro- gram in ecology, ‘‘Vigie-Nature”, managed by the French National Museum of Natural His- tory. Vigie-Nature consists of a national network of amateur observatories dedicated to a participative study of biodiversity in France that has been running for the last twenty years. We collected 123 articles published by Vigie-Nature in international peer-reviewed journals between 2007 and 2019, and computed the yearly amount of citations of these articles between 0–12 years post-publication. We then compared this body of citations with the number of yearly citations relative to the ensemble of the articles published in ecology and indexed in the ‘‘Web of Science” data-base. Using a longitudinal data analysis, we could observe that the yearly number of citations of the Vigie-Nature articles is significantly higher than that of the other publications in the same domain. Furthermore, this excess of citations tends to steadily grow over time: Vigie-Nature publications are about 1.5 times more cited 3 years after publication, and 3 times more cited 11 years post-publication. These results sug-

gest that large-scale biodiversity citizen science projects are susceptible to reach a high epi- stemic impact, when managed in specific ways which need to be clarified through further investigations. Introduction The participation of non-professional scientists in the production of scientific knowledge is hardly a new phenomenon. The history of the natural sciences, from XIXth century botany to contemporary ecology and conservation sciences, shows several instances of amators engage- ment in scientific practices ([1, 2]). However, calls for a larger implication of lay citizens in the process of knowledge and expertise production are on the rise, while inclusiveness in scientific research is increasingly valued by institutional discourse [3]. Within scientific practices them- selves, this trend is particularly notable through the growth of so-called ‘‘citizen science”, which includes a large variety of forms of participation of non professional scientists (citizens, some members of NGOs) in the production of scientific knowledge [4]. The value of this type of public engagement in science for citizen empowerment [5], public learning and understanding of science ([6, 7]), and the development of new tools of PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258350 October 11, 2021 1 / 13 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Bedessem B, Julliard R, Montuschi E (2021) Measuring epistemic success of a biodiversity citizen science program: A citation study. PLoS ONE 16(10): e0258350. https://doi.

org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258350 Editor: Jose´ Gutie´rrez-Pe´rez, University of Granada: Universidad de Granada, SPAIN Received: March 30, 2021 Accepted: September 25, 2021 Published: October 11, 2021 Copyright: © 2021 Bedessem et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information files. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.