Hi everybody, this is my first post in this forum… apologies for any inconvenience. I come with a question that seems to me rather simple, but still I could not find an answer in other threads or in iNaturalist FAQ. Given an “all rights reserved” record available only in iNaturalist, can I cite in…

I continue to believe that it should not be possible to copyright an observation. Photo or sound, yes, even the text in the “Notes” field, ok, but the facts of the observation, no. What is the possible use case for sharing an observation on a platform like iNaturalist, and copyrighting it? To the o…

I’m not a lawyer, but I think the law is pretty clear here (at least in Canada and US which is what I’m familiar with). A basic fact like “[observer] saw [species] at [location] on [date]” does not contain any information/content protected by copyright and can be reproduced without any legal issues.…

Do you know this page? There are informations about citing records there, you might fiind it useful. https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000170344-how-should-i-cite-inaturalist- I think that it is important, among other things, to mention in the paper both a person who ma…

[image] reuvenm: A basic fact like “[observer] saw [species] at [location] on [date]” does not contain any information/content protected by copyright and can be reproduced without any legal issues Sadly this is not the understanding of GBIF, who will not accept copyrighted observations , so th…

Thanks eyekosaeder, the page you linked was particularly useful, especially this sentence "Citation legally protects an author who wants to refer to someone else’s work and to avoid plagiarism and copyright infringement."

Thanks everybody. In general, I agree with the common sentiment expressed by answers: copyright has an obvious sense when applied to photos, videos, text, etc… The sense is much less clear when it is applied to the whole faunistic record, not just to the media. But as iNaturalist allows to do so,…

The license allows the observer to claim copyright over their observation, but whether this is legally enforceable, or whether they would ever attempt to enforce it, is very much open/doubtful. I think if you were to cite with a link without republishing any data as in your option 1, there is no pos…

It should be completely fine to cite the observation; just use whatever standard you’d use for any online source. In order to quote notes in their entirety or reprint the image or record, you should get the permission of the observer. You could probably make a case for fair use, but if you’re able…

As others have said, it is seriously doubtful whether an observation itself is copyrightable at all. And, as you say, even if it were copyrightable, it seems difficult to imagine how one even could violate it in a way that would not be de minimis. The closest scenario i can imagine is if, say, you …

I appreciate your good and accurate response - as a photographer and amateur copyright expert I get extremely frustrated by folks who don’t understand these things sounding off like experts!

Copyrighted records: is it possible to cite them in academic papers? How?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Does copyright law allow you to restrict use of your observations—the data, this is, not the photos? General question	33	2981	September 9, 2023
Licensing problem for paper using iNat data General question	61	2951	March 18, 2023
Questions re. use of iNaturalist data in research: GBIF exports, licenses of observations General question	15	3243	May 25, 2021
All rights reserved observations General	29	3078	April 22, 2021
Seeking clarification on "All Rights Reserved" observations General	4	758	August 6, 2025

Copyrighted records: is it possible to cite them in academic papers? How?

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