After Heejun and I reached the agreement on our coding results, I went back to a several papers we coded to confirm a few quotes and data quality mechanisms with question marks, and then re-organized the coding results into two new documents as preparation for writing results in our paper. One document shows how each data quality mechanism be applied in how many citizen science/VGI projects in similar or different ways. A simple example is that, for the mechanism of Digital vouchers, in the project of eBird, a volunteer is asked for a digital photo only if his or her initial bird identification is filtered as an unusual report; but in project of OPIHI, a volunteer is encouraged to take a photo if he or she think the species is hard to identify when collecting data. The difference here is that these two projects apply this mechanisms in different stages (after data submission vs. before data submission), but for the same purpose (accurately identify the species). Another document shows a figure modified from Wiggins’ paper by displaying in which stage (i.e., before, during, after data collection; preparing the project, collecting data in the field, submitting data on a website, processing data) the 20 citizen science/VGI projects adopt what data quality mechanisms.
Also, as thinking our project paper draft’s structure and content, I started to work on my dissertation proposal. This is an interesting, exciting, and meaningful internship project, which is also partially related to my dissertation topics. I am finding a way to make our internship project and my dissertation proposal can be benefit each other better. Although there is an end day of this internship on our contract, and I’m going to say goodbye to the Notebooks, I am happy to continue working with Rob, Heejun, and Todd. We work together happily during these two months. Our short-term goal is to submit a proposal to 2015 Citizen Science conference, a long-term goal is a potential full paper to a conference or journal. We will see how far we can go, and how we can use our research effort for contributing to helping assure and control citizen science data quality.
Thanks DataONE for providing me this great internship opportunity!