# Citing iNaturalist Data

**URL:** <https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [December 16, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684 "2019-12-16T21:40:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alexis18](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/alexis18/32/42420_2.png) [@alexis18](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/alexis18)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684/1 "2019-12-16T21:40:51Z")

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So I’m seeing in the guidelines that the best practice for citing iNaturalist data in a paper is to access through GBIF and cite their dynamic DOI. However, it is my understanding that the GBIF dataset only includes research-grade images. If I am using both research-grade and needs-ID or casual, is there any best practice? Is there a way to download a specific project’s data directly from GBIF?

I’ve considered that one way to do it is to plunk the dataset as I get it from iNaturalist with the query in a repository with the data products I’ll have to put somewhere anyway and use that DOI, but I did want to see if there was a best practice I’ve missed.

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**Author:** ![carrieseltzer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/carrieseltzer/32/38544_2.png) [@carrieseltzer](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/carrieseltzer)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 9:46pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684/2 "2019-12-16T21:46:06Z")

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If you’re using more iNaturalist data than is present in GBIF, just include as much as you can in a GBIF download for citation purposes, and then you can explain that additional data from iNaturalist were also used.

There’s currently no way to subset the iNat GBIF dataset by projects.

For reproducibility, I agree it makes sense to be able to share and cite exactly the data you use from iNat. For iNat’s tracking purposes however, it’s really important to get a GBIF citation included in the main references of the publication.

Hope that helps and glad you’re asking :-)

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**Author:** ![alexis18](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/alexis18/32/42420_2.png) [@alexis18](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/alexis18)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 10:03pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684/3 "2019-12-16T22:03:08Z")

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Great thanks! I’ll be sure to cite the GBIF dataset regardless and get as much as I can from GBIF.

I probably will stick the data I grab from iNaturalist directly into a repository for reproducibility, if I use the GBIF iNat DOI/info in that provenance information it should make it back to you all if anyone uses that data directly as well then I think

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/2X/7/7831452cf7f0d653ff1ffd34176334b7ef1b6a17.png) [@system](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2020, 10:03pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/citing-inaturalist-data/8684/4 "2020-02-14T22:03:08Z")

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