Lessons From Galaxy Zoo: Citizen Science for Astrophysics and Beyond

Since its launch in 2007, the online citizen science project Galaxy Zoo has attracted more than 250,000 members of the public who have contributed more than 150 million morphological classifications of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Hubble Space Telescope, and thereby made important discoveries. The project has produced more than 20 academic papers and triggered follow-up observations on some of the world's largest telescopes. The project's results have come from both from averaging the contributions made through the main interface, through serendipitous discovery and through community-led research, mediated via the project's forum, which also provides a unique space for professional and citizen scientists to interact with each other. 
Project principal investigator Chris Lintott will consider how Galaxy Zoo reveals these different modes of engagement and discovery, and the implications for future project design. Case studies will be drawn from the Zooniverse network of citizen science projects, a collection of sites that share the goal of involving the public in data analysis. The Zooniverse deliberately includes tasks which vary not only in content, from astronomy to climate change and even papyrology, but also in depth of engagement and the skill level required. Encouraging this deeper engagement by an ever-growing subset of the citizen science audience will be essential in making best use of the ever-larger data sets being produced by the next generation of experiments.