Does the field of science matter for knowledge co-production in citizen science? Comparing practices from freshwater to urban sociology in Australia

The value of citizen science is often viewed twofold: scientific and social.Citizen science varies from crowdsourcing data collection and public education and mobilization, to a form of knowledge co-production.Practiced across a vast range of disciplines, from environmental monitoring and astronomy to public health, the designs and objectives of citizen science vary.While the complexity of sustainability problems requires both scientific and social value creation, little is known about how these variations impact the scientific and social outcomes of citizen science projects .Yu et al. 1 show that the relationships among the key conditional factors and the outcomes of knowledge co-production in citizen science vary between natural sciences and social and mixed sciences.This paper further explores how and why the field of science impacts the characteristics of knowledge coproduction.Comparing two Australian citizen science projects in freshwater and urban sociology, Merri Creek Waterwatch and U City Adelaide, this study contextualized the statistically confirmed relationship between the field of science and knowledge co-production with qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and desk-based research.Specifically, we analyzed how the different characteristics of scientific/explicit knowledge and lay/tacit knowledge between natural and social sciences are reflected in the relationships among the key factors and outcomes of knowledge co-production.Our findings highlight the varying characteristics of knowledge co-production across disciplines and, as such, inform the knowledge management and participatory research literature.