Using iNaturalist for sharing collection data

Since I first really looked at iNaturalist as platform for sharing research data (see this 2015 blog post), the site has continued to increase in sophistication and good design. While I am here visiting Tet Yahara’s lab, we have been discussing ways to get his biodiversity data online. He plans to share collection and plot data via GBIF, but also is interested in sharing images of some of the 30,000+ collections they have made, and has decided to try sharing via iNaturalist. There are pros and cons of using iNaturalist for scientific collections. Some pros:

• It’s very well-designed, stable and not likely to go away any time soon.
• It’s easy for anyone to upload and edit observations one-by-one.
• The excellent API allows bulk uploads and edits (see below).
• The core object is the observation (individual organisms in a time and place), but this can be co-opted easily to represent a collection.
• Many metadata fields are already mapped to Darwin Core (DwC) fields, and new DwC fields can be created for any observation/collection.
• The taxon subscription and community determination function that is at the heart of iNat is excellent for allowing others to add new determinations, with comments, to any observation.

And a few cons:

• The taxonomy...
• The platform is explicitly designed to support and encourage citizen science (= casual observations), and will probably remain that way. Co-opting the platform for more precise science uses is probably tolerated, but may not be encouraged by the originators and developers (I need to ask about this directly), and functionality that may increase the scientific precision of the platform may not be forthcoming.

I’ve been involved with the design and programming of three web apps for sharing biodiversity data (xmalesia version 1, xmalesia version 2, and an Indonesian citizen science platform), so clearly I am prone to nothing exists to do exactly what I want so I’ll make a new thing’ way of thinking (!), but in the case I’m ready to let others do the work, and there are work-arounds for the shortcomings I list above.

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