Roadkill: Scientific Publishing with Citizen Scientists

Objectives: The process of publishing preliminary results in a pre-print approach is aimed to share results as fast as possible and to give citizen scientists feedback in a timely manner. Furthermore, new research questions based on submitted observations of citizen scientists will be identified, opening the research process even further. This approach should lead to an increase in scientific literacy in participating citizen scientists and also result in an open and innovative research process. Approach: The basis of our approach is the citizen science project Roadkill (https://roadkill.at/). Citizen science describes a scientific method where scientists and laypeople collaborate in a scientific project. In Project Roadkill the participants are collecting data on road-killed animals by using apps and a website. In Project Roadkill, over 800 participants reported >13.000 road-killed animals since 2014. Project Roadkill is therefore a perfect starting point for our approach in which we collaborate with citizen scientists in the scientific publishing process on three different time levels: 1. Citizen scientists use real-time data of project Roadkill and customizable scientific analyses as basis for their questions; 2. A research topic can be selected by citizen scientists based on sent-in questions and quarterly analyses with more detailed information on e.g. how many citizen scientists have contributed how much data (and on which species) and how many protected species have been reported in the last 3 months; 3. a research question will be co-designed and annual in-depth analyses are provided focusing on the surrounding landscapes of the reported roadkills and the type of roads from where these roadkills have been reported.