Strengths and Challenges of Using iNaturalist in Plant Research with Focus on Data Quality

iNaturalist defines itself as an “online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature” and it is likely one of the largest citizen science web portals in the world, as every year millions of observations across thousands of species are gathered and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diversity (Basel) 2024-01, Vol.16 (1), p.42
Main Authors: López-Guillén, Eduard, Herrera, Ileana, Bensid, Badis, Gómez-Bellver, Carlos, Ibáñez, Neus, Jiménez-Mejías, Pedro, Mairal, Mario, Mena-García, Laura, Nualart, Neus, Utjés-Mascó, Mònica, López-Pujol, Jordi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
alien plants
Biodiversity
Biological diversity
Botanical research
citizen science
Citizen scientists
conservation
Geography
Global positioning systems
GPS
Internet
Methods
Mobile applications
monitoring
Science
Scientists
Smartphones
Social networks
Social organization
species discovery
Taxonomy
Technology application
threatened species
Usability
Web applications
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:iNaturalist defines itself as an “online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature” and it is likely one of the largest citizen science web portals in the world, as every year millions of observations across thousands of species are gathered and collectively compiled by an engaged community of nearly 3 million users (November 2023). The strengths and potentialities that explain the success of the platform are reviewed and include, among others, its usability and low technical requirements, immediacy, open-access, the possibility of interacting with other users, artificial-intelligence-aided identification, versatility and automatic incorporation of the validated records to GBIF. iNaturalist has, however, features that scientists need to carefully consider when using it for their research, making sure that the quality of observations does not limit or hinder its usefulness in plant research. While these are identified (e.g., the lack of representative photographs for many observations or the relatively frequent identification errors), we provide some suggestions to overcome them and, by doing so, improve the use and add value to iNaturalist for plant research.
ISSN:1424-2818
1424-2818
DOI:10.3390/d16010042