NOAA’s National Weather Service Cooperative

Observer Program (COOP) and the US Geological

Service (USGS) have used citizen science and

crowdsourcing for over a century. In this way, vol-

unteers collaborate with reports ranging from bio-

diversity to computer science, health and medicine,

and even disaster response. Official government

websites, such as citizenscience.gov and chal-

lenge.gov, are designed to speed up the use of

actors to actively participate in a science-based

society. The National Geographic Society runs a

Citizen Science Project where people can partici-

pate in wildlife observations identifying plants and

animals as part of a BioBlitz, uploading and adding

them to a global database of biodiversity to support

local to global research projects; joining to an inter-

national citizen-science campaign to raise public

awareness of the impact of light pollution (Global

at Night); monitoring and reporting on coral

over 700 participants from 350 organizations, sci-

entific institutions, learned societies, non-govern-

mental organizations and civic societies, founda-

tions, and private individuals.

In Argentina, researchers from the Instituto

Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero

We are pleased to publish our first Citizen Sci-

ence research article in this journal. We believe this

type of collaborative activities must be present

here as recognition of citizens’ interest in marine

sciences and their growing concern for the protec-

tion of the environment. Citizen Science is under-

and the dissemination of these activities by

researchers on a primarily vocational basis (Open-

Scientist)’. It may encompass basic or applied sci-

ence research activities, locally or globally, follow-

ing protocols and practices of the disciplines in

which the research is framed. Citizen participation

can range from short-term collection of data to

intensive use of leisure time to delve deeper into a

research topic together with scientists and/or other

volunteers, asking questions, or being involved in

part voluntarily in the scientific process, address-

ing real-world problems in different ways such as

formulating research questions, conducting scien-

tific experiments, collecting and analyzing data,

interpreting results, making new discoveries,

developing technologies and applications, and

solving complex problems (Senabre et al. 2018).

Citizen Science complements the outreach and

training activities carried out by different organiza-

tions around the world. US agencies, such as

EDITORIAL’S CORNER

identify and record the occurrence of invasive

species (Soba y Herrera, 2012) and, recently, they

trained local divers to collect seawater samples

for the analysis of physicochemical variables,

chlorophyll-a, and plankton. In the Fishial.ai ini-

tiative, technology is being developed for the

identification of fish species through Artificial

Intelligence, which can be accessed through a

portal to add volunteer’s contributions. Other Cit-

tion of aquatic ecosystems by offering users game

tools to learn how to take care of them; and

Nodos, platform for collaborative content on the

performing arts. Between April 30th and May

3rd, 2021, the City Nature Challenge was held in

Buenos Aires, one of the largest global citizen

science events organized by the Museo Argentino

de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’

(MACN-CONICET) together with Fundación

Vida Silvestre Argentina. Citizens from all over

trend. This is the case of Barcelona, where the

city council created the Citizen Science Office in

2012. A growing scientific and technological

activity carried out in the Catalan city makes an

ideal environment for the development of citizen

science projects, such as InSPIRES and the Net-

work of Meteorological Observers.

ISSN 2683-7595 (print)

ISSN 2683-7951 (online)

https://ojs.inidep.edu.ar

Journal of the Instituto Nacional de Investigación

y Desarrollo Pesquero (INIDEP)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons

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