Changes in the iNaturalist 'EwA Biodiversity Project' to Favor Records for Science...

[EwA]

Some of our followers have a license setting for their records that prevents their Research-Grade observation to be shared and used by external science platforms -which BTW iNaturalist isn't (a science platform). 

So, to start: A little clarification. Unless vetted records migrate to GBIF, our iNat pics are not really used for Science. iNat is primarily a social network for nature enthusiasts. Citizen science is only relating to how the users use iNat (licensing, protocol, etc.). Having a pic on iNat does not equate to 'proper' citizen science unless they can be used by the scientists. And a misunderstanding is that Research Grade are science records. No, they're not: that label only means in iNat that they can be used by scientists and those science platforms they share the records with, but provided that they have a license that allows scientists to really use those records - pushing them to GBiF, the Encyclopedia of Life, etc. In other words, unless the records are going to GBIF (and alike international Science DBs), iNat is nothing really more than a glorified nature photo album. A new Flikr of sort :-)

It's fine, but because EwA can't use then the reported numbers (for our annual report) from our iNat Biodiversity projects when super users records skew too much the stat of interest, then we are reorganizing the projects. It's a given that It's annoying that we discovered the issue late in the game (we are so lucky that Dan -one of our EwA collaborators- found that our supposed contribution actually did not contribute as they were not migrating. But we found a way to fix our stat/report problem... :-)

To solve that, we are changing the structure of our citizen science projects on iNat so that they favor GBIF (and science). 

- The EwA Nature Circles project has been renamed to EwA Nature Photo Album and is now disconnected from the umbrella Citizen Science project: 'The EwA Biodiversity Projects'. The EwA Nature Photo Album (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ewa-nature-photo-album) is now geared towards Nature enthusiasts who are using iNat primarily as a photo album with no specific citizen science aspiration. 

- A new EwA Citizen Science Project, named 'EwA Global Biodiversity' (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ewa-global-biodiversity) is replacing the old EwA Nature Circles, to keep our users who had the licensing allowing the records to be pushed to GBIF

- The umbrella project: EwA Biodiversity Projects (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ewa-biodiversity-projects) then will show cleaner stats, so that we can point and record that ratio to our communities, partners and the governmental organizations we have to communicate our findings to. 

It's a good solution. This allows EwA observers and close super users to participate at the level that they want, prefer or feel most comfortable with: as Nature enthusiasts (photo album), or as citizen scientists (contributing explicitly to Science databases). 

Here we are! Enjoy our projects at whatever level you want, and knowing what's behind the scene!

If you are not sure of the licensing that you have,  and if you want to make sure that your records are where you want them to be, message us! 

Cheers, - Claire

[EwA]

And after reorganizing our iNat Biodiversity projects to favor global non-casual records that can be shared with GBIF -the Global Biodiversity Information Facility- from our close citizen scientists and collaborators, I am now realizing that our little group of super citizen scientists is really out there! 

Thanks to Dan (5,111), Laura (2,648), Joe (1,451), Bill (1,314), Shilpa (1,004),  and all of you who are observing and recording for the good of Nature and for helping biodiversity science! You truly rock! 

Cheers!, - Claire

On Wednesday, September 4, 2019 at 5:47:03 PM UTC-4, EwA wrote:

Some of our followers have a license setting for their records that prevents their Research-Grade observation to be shared and used by external science platforms -which BTW iNaturalist isn't (a science platform). 

So, to start: A little clarification. Unless vetted records migrate to GBIF, our iNat pics are not really used for Science. iNat is primarily a social network for nature enthusiasts. Citizen science is only relating to how the users use iNat (licensing, protocol, etc.). Having a pic on iNat does not equate to 'proper' citizen science unless they can be used by the scientists. And a misunderstanding is that Research Grade are science records. No, they're not: that label only means in iNat that they can be used by scientists and those science platforms they share the records with, but provided that they have a license that allows scientists to really use those records - pushing them to GBiF, the Encyclopedia of Life, etc. In other words, unless the records are going to GBIF (and alike international Science DBs), iNat is nothing really more than a glorified nature photo album. A new Flikr of sort :-)

It's fine, but because EwA can't use then the reported numbers (for our annual report) from our iNat Biodiversity projects when super users records skew too much the stat of interest, then we are reorganizing the projects. It's a given that It's annoying that we discovered the issue late in the game (we are so lucky that Dan -one of our EwA collaborators- found that our supposed contribution actually did not contribute as they were not migrating. But we found a way to fix our stat/report problem... :-)

To solve that, we are changing the structure of our citizen science projects on iNat so that they favor GBIF (and science). 

- The EwA Nature Circles project has been renamed to EwA Nature Photo Album and is now disconnected from the umbrella Citizen Science project: 'The EwA Biodiversity Projects'. 

The EwA Nature Photo Album (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ewa-nature-photo-album) is now geared towards Nature enthusiasts who are using iNat primarily as a photo album with no citizen science aspiration.