Does Citizen Science Reach the Citizen? Exploring the Science–Society Interface Through Scholarly and Societal Attention

The study applied an Altmetric approach to examine the science-society interface in citizen science research. Bibliographic data were collected from Scopus for 10,285 articles published between 2016 and 2025. Altmetric data corresponding to the 100 most highly cited articles were collected from the Dimensions database. Python was used for various statistical analyses. Spearman’s ρ was computed to assess the association between scientific impact and social influence. Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze how open access (OA) status affected scholarly and social constructs. The results showed 2017 having the highest number of publications (23) and citations (8,172). Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) was highest in 2018 (5,093). The articles spanned across 73 journals and 57 countries, with the US being the most productive. X was the most prominent among social media platforms. Correlations among citations, AAS, and Mendeley were found to be weak to moderate (ρ = 0.437 for Citation-AAS, ρ = 0.570 for Citation-Mendeley, and ρ = 0.350 for AAS-Mendeley). OA status of articles significantly increased AAS but not citations or Mendeley readership. The relation between scientific impact and societal attention of citizen science research was relatively close, yet enough distinction remained. The results would benefit researchers, journals, funders, and practitioners of citizen science.