Welcome to SciStarter Australia!
SciStarter Australia provides a list of citizen science projects from across Australia. Scroll down to search for a citizen science project near you!
The SciStarter Australia team is working to expand our database of citizen science projects. If you are a project leader, we encourage you to add your project to the SciStarter platform, with Australian-based projects flowing through to our national website.
We'd love to hear from you! Submit your feedback on the beta site to scistarteraus@adelaide.edu.au or fill in the form below.
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How do projects get put into SciStarter Australia?SciStarter Australia is integrated with the larger international SciStarter platform. Australia-based projects submitted to scistarter.com will flow through to SciStarter Australia. Each project submitted to SciStarter Australia is reviewed by a member of our team for accuracy and completeness before it is made public. We do not include commercialised projects, fundraisers, or similar, but we do use a very wide definition of citizen or community science when considering projects for inclusion.
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How can I add my project?If your citizen science project is not listed here and you wish to add it, please visit https://scistarter.org/add-project.
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How long do projects stay active?Each year we ask project leaders to update their project pages or change the status to “completed.” Completed records still appear to the public which allows us to track project progress over time, but they have a red sign that says “this project is complete.”
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Do I still need to use BioCollect?We strongly encourage all environmental citizen science projects to use BioCollect for scientific data collection purposes. Centralised databases such as BioCollect are vital to the aims of citizen science. Click here to learn about BioCollect.
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What should I do in my project entry to get participants interested?See this blog post for tips and best practices on crafting your SciStarter entry.
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Where can I find best practices for conducting citizen science?We encourage project leaders to consult the 10 Principles of Citizen Science for a best practice guide to conducting citizen science projects.
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What data protocols should I follow?SciStarter Australia encourages all projects to ensure that their processes align with the FAIR Principles for Scientific Data and Stewardship and the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.
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What ethical protocols should I follow?Projects based in Australia must be compliant with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2023), the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, the Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes, and any other relevant local, state, or national ethics guidelines and regulations.
SciStarter Australia acknowledges receipt of funding from the State of South Australia via its citizen science initiative within the Department for Environment and Water (DEW), and from the Environment Institute and the Interdisciplinary Research Funding Scheme at the University of Adelaide, as well as in kind support from its partners.
SciStarter Australia is a nationwide initiative, and the citizen science activities that it contains range across the many homelands of Indigenous Australian peoples. We pay our respect to their Elders, past and present, and acknowledge their continuing connection to their lands, waters, culture, and heritage.