I would think using info from an observation for research would be covered by fair use. Also, ideas and information are not copyrightable, as far as I know. At least in the US, facts are not copyrightable. I’m honestly not sure what exactly is covered by observation licenses other than the text in addition to pictures (which have their own licenses). The copyright on data is for how they are presented, and when citing someone else’s ideas/fact collection in a paper you would paraphrase and add the citation/reference to give credit to the origin (not giving credit would be plagiarism, not necessarily copyright infringement). So I don’t see an issue with adding a data point based on an “all rights reserved” observation on iNaturalist as long as credit is given and you are not copying the pictures or any description text verbatim into your paper. From an observer standpoint, I’d love to know if my observations were used for a scientific study of some sort but mine all have CC licenses and many got into GBIF so they might be used already.
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