Here are some helpful papers making the case for online crowdsourcing:
- This paper shows that online crowdsourcing can be legitimately used for collecting data, and that it allows to collect high quality data inexpensively and rapidly.
- Here's a paper showing that results from a lab experiment were indistinguishable when replicated online.
- Here's a more nuanced perspective on lab vs. online experiments: some effects replicate online, others don't.
- This one is a great example of a high-impact paper published in the journal Nature using MTurk samples.
- Finally, this new paper shows that Prolific is better suited for scientific research than MTurk.
You can read more on the advantages and limitations of online samples here.