Create a New FieldScope Project

FieldScope is a platform used by citizen and community science programs to support and empower participants in a project to collect, visualize, analyze, and share their data. The FieldScope platform is made available by BSCS Science Learning at low-to-no cost. If you are interested in launching a new project or migrating an existing citizen science project onto the FieldScope platform, please fill out our Contact Us form and include information about your project to receive more information on how to get started.

We invite you to check out these other helpful articles from the FieldScope Help Center:  

• About FieldScope
• History of FieldScope
• Launching a FieldScope Project - What to expect from the onboarding process

Who can launch a project on FieldScope

Anyone with a commitment to a project that asks people in different locations to contribute data and observations is welcome to launch their project using FieldScope. FieldScope is particularly beneficial for projects that have an objective to support a community of people in engaging with submitted data, including learning with data using data displays like maps and graphs and storytelling with data as a form of advocacy and communication. 

Citizen and community science projects may be started and sustained by community members, non-profits, government agencies, schools, or other groups. 

Most projects hosted on FieldScope ask project or field study participants to enter their data using the FieldScope data entry tool, which can be accessed on any web browser (including on mobile devices). Some projects choose to bulk upload spreadsheets of data or work with the FieldScope development team to create custom integrations in which data hosted in other databases can be regularly imported into the FieldScope environment to facilitate community engagement with the data through visualization and analysis. For more about custom integrations, please contact us. 

What kinds of data can be added to FieldScope?

Project data entry forms can be customized to collect numeric data, data selections from categorical lists, open text data, and multimedia uploads. If applicable, groups of fields can be made repeatable to support surveys (e.g., projects that collect data about species can collect data about multiple individuals in one observation) and other styles of data collection. Check out the Customizing a Data Entry Form article for more on this. 

How do I know if FieldScope is right for me? 

FieldScope is just one of a number of online platforms that projects can use to invite a group of people to enter data about our world in different locations. FieldScope excels at  supporting citizen and community science projects with powerful, secure tools for collecting and managing data while also supporting communities of people, especially young people in formal or informal learning environments, with tools for engaging with data (learn more: Teaching with Citizen Science Data). 

If you think you may be interested in launching a project on FieldScope, we encourage you to contact us. Please include some information about your new or existing project when you reach out. 

We also encourage you to explore this help center of information to fully explore the tools, features, and opportunities of using FieldScope.