Crowdsourced Geographic Information in Citizen Science

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, citizen science has established itself as a respected way towards evidenced-based knowledge creation across various domains of application. At a time when the value and soundness of scientific research is called into question by prominent political leaders, involvement of citizens as active actors in scientific work is critical to the full transparency of the research process and its broader societal impacts. Volunteer and non-expert individuals can be the “eyes and ears” of professional scientists in locations spanning vast geographic territories, providing first-hand observation of socioeconomic as well as biophysical events that may be unfolding. Crowdsourced spatial information enriches geospatial research in ways unanticipated a short while ago thanks to the emergence of formal and informal social media networks and to the ubiquity of communication and sensing technologies. This Special Issue offers an outlet for papers relevant to crowdsourced spatial information in support of citizen science. We seek papers on theoretical, conceptual, and methodological aspects, including issues of data fusion, data uncertainty and sampling, handling of numerical, graphical, and textual data, technologies of sensing and monitoring, distributed and edge computing, spatial interactions and place semantics, and mobile communication, social networking, ethics, and geoprivacy. We also welcome original applied contributions discussing use cases of crowdsourced spatial information in social and natural science domains. Papers will be reviewed on a continuing basis until the submission deadline.

Prof. Jean-Claude Thill
Dr. Ran Tao
Dr. Zhaoya Gong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.