Distributed databases to improve data sovereignty in citizen science

Citizen science is important for community-led science. However, the knowledge and costs required to configure and manage servers for data management in such community-led projects are major barriers to the adoption of citizen science-based approaches at a larger scale. At the same time, the centralisation of communities’ data onto project servers (whether rented in « the could » or on-premise) also poses questions regarding data sovereignty true community ownership of citizen science projects. (Who owns the data? Who has the power to give or revoke access to it? How will data be accessible once the principal investigators and funding are gone?)

Distributed databases, where data is stored directly on users’ devices and shared in a peer-to-peer network, can address some of these issues by bypassing the need to rely on a centralised server for user authentication and data storage and transmission. While this approach offer solutions to some long-standing challenges of centralised approaches to data collection, distributed databases also bring their own limitations. This presentation will discuss three major questions and paradigm shifts related to the adoption of distributed databases for citizen science, namely authorisation, discovery and accessibility. Approaches for addressing these in the context of community-led participatory projects will be discussed, and examples of using Constellation distributed database software for case studies in citizen science and data sharing will be provided.