1,720,972 research outputs found
Sociality, community and productivity in Virtual Citizen Science
No full textVirtual Citizen Science describes web-based crowdsourcing activities which recruit volunteers to complete microtasks for scientific research. VCS methodologies have been applied to diverse research challenges, from identifying neurons in MRI-scan images of the optic nerve, to morphologically classifying images of galaxies. Initiatives generally rely on participants’ intrinsic motivations to encourage contributions, but increasingly designers are turning to additional mechanisms – including the use of online community features and discussion platforms such as forums. However, the influence of these features on participant engagement are still poorly understood. Drawing on a pragmatist, mixed-methods approach, this thesis explores the relationship between these social features within task and discussion elements of projects, to understand the influence of such features on volunteer productivity and project efficiency. A literature review of five transdisciplinary databases was conducted to identify design principles, motivations and social features associated with VCS approaches. This was then followed with a review of 48 VCS projects, to better understand the online community features within current VCS initiatives. To understand and clarify these findings, interviews were conducted with six members of the EyeWire project design team. Analysis of competitions in EyeWire demonstrated a relationship between task sociality and increased productivity and activity within the project. Finally, an analysis of two high-pressure VCS projects explores how periods of heavy productivity affect discussion activity. This research contributes to the understanding of motivational factors and design affordances within Virtual Citizen Science and similar crowdsourcing initiatives
Volunteer engagement in short-term virtual citizen science projects
No full textVirtual citizen science (VCS) projects have proven to be a highly effective method to analyse large quantities of data for scientific research purposes. Yet if these projects are to achieve their goals, they must attract and maintain the interest of sufficient numbers of active, dedicated volunteers. Although CSCW and HCI research has typically focussed on designing platforms to support long-term engagement, in recent years a new project format has been trialled -- using short-term crowdsourcing activities lasting as little as 48 hours. In this paper, we explore two short-term projects to understand how they influence participant engagement in the task and discussion elements of VCS. We calculate descriptive statistics to characterise project participants. Additionally, using calculation of correlation coefficients and hypothesis testing, we identify factors influencing volunteer task engagement and the effect this has on project outcomes. Our findings contribute to the understanding of volunteer engagement in VCS
"A game without competition is hardly a game": The impact of competitions on player activity in a human computation game
No full textVirtual citizen science (VCS) projects enable new forms of scientific research using crowdsourcing and human computation to gather and analyse large-scale datasets. To attract and sustain the number of participants and levels of participation necessary to achieve research aims, some VCS projects have introduced game elements such as competitions to tasks. However, we still know very little about how some game elements, particularly competitions, influence participation rates. To investigate the impact of game elements on player engagement, we conducted a two-part mixed-methods study of EyeWire, a VCS game. First, we interviewed EyeWire designers to understand their rationale for introducing competitions. Guided by their answers, we analysed two datasets of EyeWire user task contributions and chat logs to assess the effectiveness of competitions in achieving designers' goals. Our findings contribute to the growing understanding of how competitions influence participant activity in human computation initiatives and socio-technical systems such as VCS
Qrowdsmith: enhancing paid microtask crowdsourcing with gamification and furtherance incentives
Full text linkMicrotask crowdsourcing platforms are social intelligence systems in which volunteers, called crowdworkers, complete small, repetitive tasks in return for a small fee. Beyond payments, task requesters are considering non-monetary incentives such as points, badges, and other gamified elements to increase performance and improve crowdworker experience. In this article, we present Qrowdsmith, a platform for gamifying microtask crowdsourcing. To design the system, we explore empirically a range of gamified and financial incentives and analyse their impact on how efficient, effective, and reliable the results are. To maintain participation over time and save costs, we propose furtherance incentives, which are offered to crowdworkers to encourage additional contributions in addition to the fee agreed upfront. In a series of controlled experiments, we find that while gamification can work as furtherance incentives, it impacts negatively on crowdworkers' performance, both in terms of the quantity and quality of work, as compared to a baseline where they can continue to contribute voluntarily. Gamified incentives are also less effective than paid bonus equivalents. Our results contribute to the understanding of how best to encourage engagement in microtask crowdsourcing activities and design better crowd intelligence systems.</p
Is virtual citizen science a game?
No full textThe use of game elements within virtual citizen science is increasingly common, promising to bring increased user activity, motivation and engagement to large-scale scientific projects. However there is an ongoing debate about whether or not gamifying systems such as these is actually an effective means by which to increase motivation and engagement in the long term. While gamification itself is receiving a large amount of attention, there has been little beyond individual studies to assess its suitability or success for citizen science; similarly, while frameworks exist for assessing citizen science performance, they tend to lack any appreciation of the effects that game elements might have had. We therefore review the literature to determine what the trends are regarding the performance of particular game elements or characteristics in citizen science, and survey existing projects to assess how popular different game features are. Investigating this phenomenon further, we then present the results of a series of interviews carried out with the EyeWire citizen science project team to understand more about how gamification elements are introduced, monitored and assessed in a live project. Our findings suggest that projects use a range of game elements with points and leaderboards the most popular, particularly in projects that describe themselves as 'games'. Currently, gamification appears to be effective in citizen science for maintaining engagement with existing communities, but shows limited impact for attracting new players
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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