How can I join/volunteer a research group for short term? I am a working professional and I wish to try working on some research projects after 9-5 job. My average skills doesn't allow me to be a part of big research groups, however, I would still like to volunteer (little or no pay expected) and work with a research group for some time and experience what's it like, gain some exposure on how they are done and finally figure out if it's for me or not?

Goal is to gain some exposure by doing, just like people have summer internship during graduation or "On-job-training" during employment in provisional period.

Are there any open, public or community-driven research groups where I can get a feel for how research is done? How can I search groups like these?

I am looking for something in fields like IT, data, computer security etc.
If you want to do it as a hobby you should look for "citizen science groups" near you or in your area of interest. See the Wiki article to get an idea.


  Citizen science (also known as community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or networked science) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or nonprofessional) scientists.


If you want to participate in research at universities and research institutes I would just try to contact the group(s) there that work on the topics of you are interest in.
I guess plenty of groups would be happy to have someone to do some research assistant work and for you it would be a possibility to get to know them and their work.