Visualization of Citizen Science Volunteers´ Behaviors with Data from Usage Logs

Web-based citizen science projects collect logs of interactions between volunteers and project websites. In this article, the authors present visualization techniques that can be used to infer volunteer behavior in such projects, using the Galaxy Zoo astronomy citizen science project as a test case. This information could be used to shed light on why volunteers join or leave a project-a greater understanding of these factors could help citizen science project developers better recruit and retain their volunteers.