Perceptions of volunteers in <a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/">climateprediction.net</a>

Since 1996, some scientists with large quantities of data to process have turned to the public to recruit volunteers willing to do so on their personal computers. A number of such projects have emerged since then, with many hundreds of thousands of active volunteers.

In the seminar, I will briefly consider the prospects for the future of these "volunteer computing projects", arguing that they fulfil a unique and important role for many scientists. However, there are still shortcomings with the middleware currently available to scientists to set up and run these projects. A critical factor in the uptake of any new middleware designed to overcome these shortcomings will be to convince the scientists and the computing experts who set up and look after the projects (the "technoscientists") — both those with experience of, and those new to, volunteer computing — that projects which use the middleware will be able to engage and retain volunteers. To do so will require an understanding of the technoscientists' beliefs about strategies for engagement and retention, and why they hold these beliefs.

To this end, I will present findings related to this issues from a case study of a volunteer computing project, climateprediction.net, now with approximately 32,000 active volunteers who download and run simulations on their personal computers of the world's climate and how it might change in the future.