Collaborate

Collaborate with us

Would your research benefit from the involvement of thousands of volunteers? The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most successful online platform for crowd-sourced research; we have millions of registered volunteers working in collaboration with professional researchers on research projects across a range of disciplines, from astronomy to the humanities.

Research teams can build Zooniverse projects in two ways.

Teams can use our free-to-use Project Builder tool to create their very own Zooniverse project. In order to launch publicly and be featured on our projects page, teams must go through our review process to ensure the project is appropriate for the platform and ready to be launched. This is the quickest and most straightforward option for creating a Zooniverse project. For more information on this process, including estimated timelines for review, please see our Project Review Best Practices & Flowchart. 

In cases where the tools available in the Project Builder aren’t quite right for the research goals of a particular team, researchers may want to consider partnering with the Zooniverse to create new, custom tools. We work with these teams to apply for funding to support the research, design, and development process. Those who have applied for grant funding before will know that this process can take a long time. Once we’ve applied for a grant, it can take 6 months or more to hear back about whether or not our efforts were successful. Funded projects typically require at least 6 months to design, build, and test, depending on the complexity of the features being created. We then need additional time to generalize (and often revise) them for inclusion in the Project Builder toolkit. 

If you are interested in partnering with us to create custom project tools or infrastructure, please contact us.

Our supporters

Selected collaborators

Call for projects

Are you a researcher working on a project relevant to one of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate divisions (Astrophysics, Biological and Physical Sciences, Heliophysics, and the Planetary Science) who would benefit from contributions from Zooniverse volunteers? As part of an on-going partnership with NASA, the Zooniverse seeks to build on its current support of NASA research teams and encourage the development of new projects on our platform.

Whether you are already building workflows using the Project Builder or you are just starting to consider how crowdsourced contributions could advance your research, the Zooniverse team has dedicated effort to support teams during development and implementation of NASA-focused projects. We are happy to discuss and support proposals to NASA citizen science funding calls (including the Citizen Science Seed Funding Program, the Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program, and other NASA ROSES funding opportunities) for projects interested in using the Zooniverse platform.

If you have questions or require any further guidance, please contact Cliff Johnson, Zooniverse Science Lead and NASA Liaison: cliff@zooniverse.org.

Corporate social responsibility opportunities

Over half a dozen organizations to-date leverage Adler Zooniverse as an opportunity to fulfill their corporate social responsibility. Participation can fulfill service hour requirements for employees, graduation, scholarships, etc. A unique volunteer opportunity, participants take time to reflect on how their efforts (and the community’s collective efforts) are contributing to our understanding of our world and the broader universe. Contact us to learn more about this initiative.