Citizen Scientist Community Engagement with the HiggsHunters project at the Large Hadron Collider
Alan James Barr, Andrew C Haas, Charles William Kalderon

TL;DR
This study analyzes how a large, diverse citizen science community engaged with the HiggsHunters project at the LHC, revealing high engagement levels, community vocabulary development, and interest in future projects.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed analysis of citizen scientist behavior, discussion, and survey data in a high-energy physics citizen science project.
Findings
Over 37,000 participants from 179 countries
High levels of engagement and classification activity
Development of a unique technical vocabulary within the community
Abstract
The engagement of Citizen Scientists with the HiggsHunters.org citizen science project is investigated through analysis of behaviour, discussion, and survey data. More than 37,000 Citizen Scientists from 179 countries participated, classifying 1,500,000 features of interest on about 39,000 distinct images. While most Citizen Scientists classified only a handful of images, some classified hundreds or even thousands. Analysis of frequently-used terms on the dedicated discussion forum demonstrated that a high level of scientific engagement was not uncommon. Evidence was found for a emergent and distinct technical vocabulary developing within the Citizen Science community. A survey indicates a high level of engagement and an appetite for further LHC-related citizen science projects.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
