Citizen science—data collected through voluntary public contributions—now can and must step up to fill the gap and play a more central role in official statistics. In this evolving environment, we argue that citizen science can become an essential part of national data gathering efforts. To date, policymakers, researchers, and agencies have viewed it as supplementary to official statistics. Although self-selected participation can introduce bias, citizen science provides fine-scale, timely, cost-efficient, and flexible data that can fill gaps and help validate official statistics. We contend that, rather than an optional complement, citizen science data should be systematically integrated into national and global data ecosystems.

Source: The Guardian January 08, 2026 17:23 UTC