Proloog: citizen science voor een duurzame en gezonde samenleving – welke rol voor overheden?

The increased capacity for affordable data processing, the rise of platforms, and facilitated citizen mobilization through social media encourage citizen science. The rise of citizen science may have significant implications for governance and policy. In the prologue of this special issue on citizen science, we outline the potential of citizen science for public organisations and discuss various tensions. This potential includes citizens influencing policies and generating novel insights through unique combinations of data, organisations and individuals. Public organisations may engage in citizen science initiatives for both epistemological and democratic reasons. We conclude that the roles of public organisations and citizen scientists are not well defined, which is, for example, reflected in debates over data ownership. Additionally, we identify tensions, such as differing perspectives among involved actors in citizen science projects regarding what constitutes data quality.