Call for Abstracts

You are invited to submit your abstracts for the CitSci India 2024 Virtual Conference. We are accepting abstracts for poster presentations on:

Challenges and Opportunities in Species Identification: Enhancing Data Quality in Citizen Science for Biodiversity Research – Species identification presents a significant challenge in citizen science projects, especially in India and the Global South, where varying levels of expertise among participants constitute a significant factor. These regions, rich in biodiversity and home to many poorly documented endemic species, face problems when incorrect or missing identifications skew our understanding of ecosystem functions and lead to ineffective conservation strategies. Limited access to technology, educational resources, and expert support further complicates accurate identification despite the enthusiasm of citizen scientists. Misidentifications can undermine citizen science data’s overall quality and reliability, potentially discouraging public participation if contributors feel their efforts are undervalued. To address these challenges and strengthen the citizen science movement, exploring opportunities for developing localized identification guides with support from expert peer groups, improving digital tools, and enhancing training and support systems is crucial. Ensuring data accuracy and maintaining trust in citizen-generated data is vital for the continued growth and effectiveness of the Citizen Science movements.

Citizens, Data and Science – A wide range of approaches to collecting data for scientific purposes is considered ‘citizen science’. For example, dedicated technology can be utilised to collect information to address specific questions like “geographic range of species” or “biodiversity response to climate change” through project-specific training. On the other hand, passively contributed images on social media may also serve to understand patterns and processes in ecology. This spectrum of publicly contributed data has the potential for applications ranging from pedagogy to policy change. This session will aim to synthesise the wide spectrum of publicly sourced data and some applications of current citizen science projects.

Deadlines

Last date to submit abstracts: 3rd Nov 2024
Notification for acceptance/rejection: 7th Nov 2024
Final poster/video submission: 5th Dec 2024

To submit your abstracts, you need to first apply to register for the conference. Please ensure that you read the guidelines before submitting the abstract. Abstracts which are beyond the scope of the conference will not be accepted. If your abstract gets selected, an email notification will be sent to the presenting author’s email address. Check the Instructions Page for details on how to present at the conference.

Guidelines for submitting an abstract

Please use the text box allocated for “Abstract” to submit an abstract of not more than 250 words. This should not include the title of the paper, name of author/co-authors, graphs, images, bibliographies or footnotes.
Abstracts should be submitted in a single paragraph and should include the research question, background, purpose, methodology, results and conclusion.
All submissions should be made in English