We propose a rather different typol

We propose a rather different typology of the practices that have been labeled “citizen science,” distinguishing between five epistemic practices, which we identified expanding on an initial classification developed by physicist and participatory research organizer François Grey (“volunteer thinking,” “volunteer sensing,” “volunteer computing,” Grey, 2012). Our five epistemic practices involved in participatory research—sensing, computing, analyzing, self-reporting, making—help us see beyond the recent initiatives carrying the label “citizen science” and capture the greater diversity of participatory practices, past and present (for an illustration of each of these different epistemic practices, see the five vignettes). This typology does not imply any hierarchy between the different kinds, they are simply qualitatively different, and often hybrid, modes of knowledge production. These practices are ideal types, not natural kinds that could uniquely define the “nature” of participatory projects. Their purpose is to help us analyze (not classify) participatory projects in terms of their different knowledge practices. “Sensing,” for example, might be a dominant practice in a nature observation project, which also involves “analyzing” data and “making” instruments as a more minor component. This typology, like all typologies, has an agenda: by staying close to the actual knowledge practices of the actors, it avoids presupposing that they are all related and forms a thing called “citizen science.”