After the book Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind (03-2021), the ExCiteS research team announces the publication of a paper explaining how to put this aspiration into practice. This new paper, named “Using Sapelli in the Field”, presents a methodology for engaging in inclusive citizen science activities. We present how to build a Sapelli project with basic and simple means.
Sapelli is a smartphone application available to anyone through the Google Play Store. This open-source project facilitates data collection across language or literacy barriers through highly configurable icon-driven user interfaces. It is designed to be used beyond conventional western utilisation to enable people with no or limited literacy to use smartphones and tablets to collect, share, and analyse data. Specifically, we detail how Sapelli has been used in Cameroon and Brazil with Indigenous communities and traditional fishery communities.
In outlining the Extreme Citizen Science methodology through which Sapelli is implemented in the field, we wish to emphasise that Extreme Citizen Science is open-ended so that researchers, citizens, Indigenous people, NGOs, civil servants, policymakers or anyone who wishes to use the approach can adapt or improve it according to their project specificities and local contexts of use.
The paper “Using Sapelli in the Field: Methods and Data for an Inclusive Citizen Science” will be available online and free access from 01/07/2021.
Extreme Citizen Science blog 