Citizen science projects frequently operate between communities and institutions (Hecker et al., 2018).

This position creates important opportunities for collaboration and innovation, but also raises questions around authority, representation, reliability, and trust.

Projects seeking broader influence therefore often need to establish legitimacy across multiple audiences simultaneously.

Different stakeholder groups may place varying emphasis on different considerations depending on their roles, responsibilities, and contexts. Scientific institutions, communities, policymakers, and funders may all consider methodological rigour, transparency, participation, and relevance important. However, the relative emphasis placed on these considerations may vary depending on context and purpose (Turrini et al., 2018; Göbel et al., 2019).

This module focuses on how projects can establish and maintain legitimacy across different stakeholder groups, recognising that expectations may vary between communities, institutions, funders, and policymakers.

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