2026-06-08T09:10:37Zhttps://docta.ucm.es/rest/oai/request

oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/1198522025-05-06T23:54:09Zcom_20.500.14352_14col_20.500.14352_15

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc López Guillén, Eduard author Herrera, Ileana author Bensid, Badis author Gómez Bellver, Carlos author Ibáñez, Neus author Jiménez Mejías, Pedro author Mairal Pisa, Mario José author Mena García, Laura author Nualart, Neus author Utjés Mascó, Mònica author López Pujol, Jordi author 2024-01-09 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. López-Guillén, E., Herrera, I., Bensid, B., Gómez-Bellver, C., Ibáñez, N., Jiménez-Mejías, P., Mairal, M., Mena-García, L., Nualart, N., Utjés-Mascó, M., & López-Pujol, J. (2024). Strengths and Challenges of Using iNaturalist in Plant Research with Focus on Data Quality. Diversity, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/D16010042 1424-2818 10.3390/d16010042 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/119852 https://doi.org/10.3390/d16010042 https://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/16/1/42 Strengths and Challenges of Using iNaturalist in Plant Research with Focus on Data Quality