Open digital data and citizen science

Open data and citizen science bring new opportunities to society. What are these opportunities and what risks can we identify in them? What are the key qualities of open data driven societies?

The development of open, inclusive and transparent data is in the focus of teaching and research at the University of Turku. Open data and citizen science foster discoveries of new innovations, which challenge old practices and create disruption. Open data supports informed decision-making and the development of democratic societies. Understanding and safeguarding the quality of open data—its contextual value, correctness, and trustworthiness—is central to this process, together with securing technical requirements, such as machine readability.

The open data and citizen science research touches the topics and themes, such as:

• Data quality, accessibility and impacts
• Open data standards, machine-readability and policies
• Data ownership, privacy, transparency, disinformation, risk management, ethics
• Citizen engagement and forms of participation 
• Data driven innovations and disruptions
• Open data skills and literacy
• Informed decision-making and the development of democratic societies