Citizen Science Payback Framework

Citizen science can be defined as the participation in scientific processes of people who are not institutionally involved with a specific field of science (Bonn et al. 2016). For some academics, the term means public participation in scientific research; these scholars understand partnerships between citizens and scientists to be opportunities to create and handle large datasets. For others, citizen science is a move toward a scientific democracy in which citizens and scientists engage as equal partners in research projects (Bonney et al. 2016). Bonney et al. (2009) established three models for public participation, viewed as three stages with increasing power allocated to citizens.

• Stage zero entails no participation of citizens which implies that the old Payback Framework structure with its academic perspective and unidirectional knowledge exchange is retained.
• The first stage entails contributory projects, in which citizens contribute data primarily.
• The second stage presents collaborative projects, which allows citizens to assist in specific research steps.
• Finally, the third stage comprises co-created projects, designed jointly by scientists and citizens, in which citizens participate in most, ideally all, project steps (Bonney et al. 2009).

The Payback Framework is an effective approach for assessing research contributions that reflect broader public value (Donovan 2011). It combines two components, first a logic model representing the project process and second a classification system that captures five dimensions of benefits: knowledge, research benefits, political and administrative benefits, health sector benefits, and broader economic benefits (Donovan and Hanney 2011).

The logic model consists of seven stages (stages 0­-6) and two interfaces, like presented graphically above. The seven stages assume an input-output perspective and delineate the underlying research project from its initial inception (stage 0) to its final outcome (stage 6) (Buxton and Hanney 1996; Donovan and Hanney 2011). The two interfaces are:

• Interface A: Project specification, selection, and commissioning and
• Interface B: Dissemination, connecting the project with its environment, and embodying the interaction between researchers and potential users (Greenhalgh et al. 2016).

Feedback loops within the model ensure that the nonlinear processes of projects are considered (Greenhalgh, Raftery, Hanney and Glover 2016).

The classification system describes assessed benefits. The five dimensions from the original Payback Framework are:

• Knowledge
• Research benefits
• Political and administrative benefits
• Health sector benefits and
• Broader economic benefits (Buxton and Hanney 1996; Donovan and Hanney 2011; Greenhalgh, Raftery, Hanney and Glover 2016).

Adapting the Payback Framework to employment research, Klautzer et al. (2011) proposed to generalise the framework to the social sciences; the primary adaption was to substitute 'impacts on practice' for 'health sector benefits'. Benefits can arise at all stages of the logic model.