Evaluation is a core management instrument and part of many scientific projects. Evaluation can be approached from several different angles, with distinct objectives in mind. In any project, we can evaluate the project process and the scientific outcomes, but with citizen science this does not go far enough. We need to additionally evaluate the effects of projects on the participants themselves and on society at large. While citizen science itself is still in evolution, we should aim to capture and understand the multiple traces it leaves in its direct and broader environment. Considering that projects often have limited resources for evaluation, we need to bundle existing knowledge and experiences on how to best assess citizen science initiatives and continually learn from this assessment. What should we concentrate on when we evaluate citizen science projects and programmes? What are current practices and what are we lacking? Are we really targeting the most relevant aspects of citizen science with our current evaluation approaches?

Air pollution is a serious problem that is causing increasing concern among European citizens. It is responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year and considerably damages human health, agriculture, and the natural environment. Despite these facts, the readiness and power of citizens to take actions is limited. To address this challenge, the citizen science project CAPTOR was launched in 2016. Using low-cost measurement devices, citizens in three European testbeds supported the monitoring of tropospheric ozone. This paper presents the results from 53 interviews with involved residents and shows that the active involvement of individuals in a complex process such as measuring tropospheric ozone can have important impacts on their knowledge and attitudes. In an attempt to expand the benefits of low-cost air quality sensors from an individual to a regional level, certain preconditions are key. Strong support in assuring data quality, visibility of the collected data in online and offline media, broad dissemination of results, and intensified communication with political decision-makers are needed.

In this paper we reflect on how to do research with co-researchers who are perceived as ‘hard to reach’. We critically debate this expression and recommend the usage of the term ‘easy to ignore’, which rather fosters self-reflection instead of creating a double deficit. We elaborate on important aspects about getting into contact, ensuring continuity, choosing methods and enhancing participation. We consider it very important to integrate these co-researchers in every step of the research process –from formulating research questions to disseminating results. Furthermore, the research design and methods shall be chosen together with the co-researchers, matching their interests and capacities. Last but not least, we recommend to continuously reflect on inclusion and exclusion of target groups as well as power relations and hierarchies within the team of researchers and co-researchers.

This article explores the multiple meanings of the concept of openness in the global maker movement. Openness is viewed as one of the key principles of the maker movement. As the global maker movement is a bricolage of diverse and situated practices and traditions, there are also many different interpretations and ways of practicing openness. We have explored this diversity with an integrative literature review, relying on the Web of Science™ database. We identified three interrelated but also, in part, mutually contested approaches to openness. Firstly, openness often refers to applying open hardware. Secondly, it is in many cases related to the inclusion and empowerment of various groups in making. Thirdly, openness appears to be seen as a means to pursue economic growth through increasing innovation activity and entrepreneurship. Our results also highlight the substantial barriers encountered by makers while aiming to open up their practices. These barriers include: value conflicts in which openness is overridden by other important values; exclusion of lower income groups from making due to a lack of resources; and difficulties in maintaining long-term activities. The different meanings of openness together with the barriers create tensions within the maker movement while implementing openness. We propose that engaging in a reflexive futures dialogue on the consequences of these tensions can enhance the maker movement to become more open, inclusive and resilient.

Microblogging services, in particular Twitter, have experienced an explosive uptake in the last few years with a decelerated grown rate since 2010. Apart from celebrities, PR and news agencies, the bulk of user profiles stems form private individuals. Amongst them, individual scientists have started to make use of Twitter for professional purposes. This paper presents a qualitative approach of discovering microblogging practices and obtaining rich descriptions of few cases that give a deeper insight into how Twitter is used by scientists active in the field of e-Learning and how this practice shapes their social networks. The methodological approach is based on online ethnographic studies. Therefore Grabeeter, a tool for collecting all public tweets of a person in various formats, has been adapted in order to obtain the data appropriate for a qualitative analysis following a grounded theory approach. After an analysis of the current state-of-the-art we will outline the methodological approach for our qualitative analysis that focuses on discovering tacit aspects of microblogging practices such as value or purpose. Finally the results of the online ethnographic approach and individual cases will be discussed and compared to similar studies. This work presents the explorative phase of a detailed qualitative approach towards exploring microblogging practices of scientists.