The role of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) I is recently experimented a shift from mere data collection purposes towards a more predominant and crucial role in each stage of scientific projects. Academia is paying a lot of attention to this as demonstrated by the forthcoming GIScience 2014 workshop on “Role of Volunteered Geographic Information in Advancing Science: Effective Utilization” and The Vespucci Initiative´s first thematic week on “VGI and Citizen Science: engaging, creating and understanding“ that will take place in July 2014 in Fiesole, Italy.

Assistant professor Frank Ostermann at the ITC faculty of the University of Twente and GEOTEC members will co-edit a late 2014 Earthzine.org ´s thematic issue in “Citizens and Science: Using Crowdsourcing to Further Earth Observations”. We call for short articles describing experiments, projects and initiatives that underpin the role of VGI and Earth Observation in scientific projects and science in general, with special emphasis to the role of citizens in the so-called Citizen Science projects.