How can academics help non-academics and the iNaturalist community contribute to "worthwhile" science?

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TLDR (too long, didn’t read): I am a MS student interested in understanding how academics can help non-academics and the iNaturalist community contribute to “worthwhile” science. This post was inspired by the following post by @jasonhernandez74 on 9/19/25: “Can we do worthwhile science outside academia?”

Hi everyone, I am Karina Torres, a first-year Master’s (MS) student who is interested in applying technology to improve natural resource conservation. Put simply, I want to create and use technology in a way that improves nature because I love nature! For my MS research, I want to create efficient tools to support the vast amount of openly accessible natural data online. I am particularly interested in the fact that image data includes primary data (which includes species identification and associated image metadata) and secondary data (e.g., life stage, behavior, phenology, species interactions that are coincidentally captured within the image).

There are many ways this secondary data can be utilized for studying nature, such as from exploring intraspecific variation to understanding community ecology dynamics. However, we do not have efficient ways of obtaining this secondary data besides manually searching, filtering, and annotating images, all of which is extremely time-consuming and requires careful documentation. There are many exciting innovations and work being done to address the rise of “big data” in conservation. Collaborators and members of the Imageomics Institute and ABC Global Center seem to be leading this frontier of conservation technology. And of course, iNaturalist’s Visipedia team, who developed iNaturalist’s Computer Vision and Geomodel, are also contributing significantly to these efforts.

So, if these groups are developing robust technologies, like the automated extraction of secondary data, where does that leave me (academics) and you (non-academics)? What do we do with all this data and information? The answer to this question brings me to the main question of this post, which was inspired by a recent post on this forum.

On 9/19/25, @jasonhernandez74 posted: “Can we do worthwhile science outside academia?” I read through all (132) replies to this post, all of which had intriguing perspectives. Throughout the remainder of my post here, I will be adding insights and ideas contributed by users from that post.

So after reading just the title and original post, I asked myself:
Well, how can academics help non-academics contribute to “worthwhile” science?

I want to note here that @arnanthescout posed a very similar question in the replies of the post:

“But for me, the question is now flipped: What can I do, as a researcher in academia, to enable people to conduct worthwhile science outside academia? Not just in data collection but in research design, data analysis, writing publications… though that might be a tangent.”

There a limited number of academics and amount of time in our day to identify patterns, create relevant ideas, and synthesize meaningful results from all this data. As many members of the iNat community noted in @jasonhernandez74’s post, non-academics are just as effective (and in some cases, arguably better or more well-suited) at performing these tasks. I agree that non-academics can contribute to “worthwhile” science. What constitutes as “worthwhile” is irrelevant to this post; it is simply something that contributes to our growing knowledge of science and our ecosystems.

I want to focus on the fact that the advent of new technologies, combined with the increasing amount of conservation-related, digitally-existing and -derived “big data” creates unique opportunities for community scientists and academics to make meaningful connections, discussions, and collaborations online.

I believe there are three important domains here, each of which are essential to making meaningful, or “worthwhile,” contributions to natural resource conservation. Moreover, I believe that making “worthwhile” contributions today and in the future requires an integration of all three domains. Those three domains are:

  • conservation, including:

    • Biological and ecological disciplinary problems and knowledge

    • professional and academic conservationists, ecologists, and similar fields

  • community science, including:

    • Creative and unconventional ideas, diverse perspectives, and community relevance

    • Non-academic users of online nature-focused platforms, such as iNaturalist and eBird

  • technology, including:

    • The innovations in application-driven technologies, developed from methodology-driven technologies

      • (Based on disciplinary knowledge in programming, computer and data structures and algorithms, and machine learning architectures)

    • Professional and academic computer scientists, machine learning engineers, and similar fields

I am not convinced that there are strong connections between all three domains:

  • Considerable integration and applications between conservation and technology has gained traction in only recent years (e.g., WILDLABS, and Imageomics).

  • Conservation and community science is becoming well-recognized, such as the importance of cultural components and social dimensions in wildlife management. I don’t think an integration of these fields is a norm yet, nor is it a common occurrence for non-academics to contribute to academia. However, I believe there is a lot of potential and value in these collaborations (see note at end of post).

  • Community science and technology are synergistically intertwined, thanks to open-source technologies, online forums, and rapid development environments like hackathons that are developed based on community-relevant needs and issues.

I believe that combining community science, technology, and conservation together is a new opportunity to produce novel perspectives and innovations across these domains. The emerging fields of iEcology, conservation culturomics, and imageomics are living proof that the human dimensions of conservation technology is “worthwhile” to science in the same way that socio-ecological systems and traditional, cultural knowledge is “worthwhile” to ecological knowledge. The integration of these three domains is a new frontier for developing technological tools and conservation insights that are relevant to our communities and ecosystems and “worthwhile” to science.

So, this brings us back to the main question of this post and a few additional questions:

Main Question:
How can academics help non-academics contribute to “worthwhile” science?
To expand on this, how can academics help non-academics and community scientists (such as those in the iNaturalist community) contribute meaningful ideas, methodologies, results, data, discussion, and insights that are notable to the academic community (i.e., the academic community can easily access and interpret your contributions, in the same way academics share and communicate via peer-reviewed journal articles).

Additional questions for discussion that are tangential to the main question:

  1. Are non-academics and community scientists lacking certain technological tools or expertise to make contributions? Similarly, are there barriers to accessing open-source resources created by academics for conservation- and ecology-related purposes?

    1. Examples might include simple visualization and data analysis tools and open-source software/data that are often shared/hosted as web dashboards or stored in Zenodo/Dryad/GitHub online repositories.

  2. What should be considered the “best” way to contact academics to get ideas and potential scientific contributions formalized academically?

    1. For example, should you look on university websites and try to find someone related to your ideas and email them directly? Should you contact extension agents, graduate students? Should there be a form to fill out to justify your reason for contact?

    2. Instead of radical shifts in institutional thinking across all academics, perhaps there could be more academics that are multidisciplinary and community-oriented to serve as “professional facilitators” that connect strong ideas from community scientists with other academics who are more disciplinary-focused?

  3. Communication may be the biggest issue in the disconnection between the academic community and non-academic community scientists. While I hope that younger generations (such as myself) will improve upon this due to our more digitally-based habits, how can we better improve communication between academics and non-academics?

  4. Two people (@eyekosaeder and @jnstuart) had discussed a vision of an “informal science” platform or a scientific journal dedicated to articles based entirely on iNaturalist records. Would developing an informal but scientifically-based platform be a promising solution for communication between academics and non-academics?

    1. See my two cents on this in the replies of this post.

  5. How can academics learn, discover, and collaborate with non-academically-ran iNaturalist projects?

    1. I admit this question may be caused from my lack of knowledge and experience with the iNaturalist platform, but I am still curious. Are there useful projects that are not affiliated with academics that should be? For example, are the relevant academics always notified of important relevant discoveries in projects undescribed species? https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/undescribed-species-on-inaturalist-umbrella

Disclaimer (if you read the whole post): I want to clarify that this post is meant to generate discussion regarding (1) the collaboration between academics and non-academics in the context of iNaturalist and community science programs and (2) how academics can assist, help, or aid non-academics make “worthwhile” contributions to science that are notable to the academic community. Discussing the definition of “worthwhile contributions” is not the intent of this post. Additionally, I do not intend to represent the academic world based on my limited experiences, and I try to avoid making generalizations where possible. I do not consider myself an iNaturalist expert, and I acknowledge that some of my ideas may be limited by my lack of experience with iNaturalist and its community. Regardless, I am very interested in learning, interacting, contributing, and collaborating with the community upon which my research and research interests relies. Lastly, I recognize that integrating technology, community science, and conservation should be a global phenomenon, though my examples or ideas may be biased towards my experiences from within the United States.

Note: One of my favorite examples of the integration between academics and non-academics is when I first started doing research as an undergraduate. I had no idea what research was or how it worked. I was given a protocol (instructions) to remove the scales off of moth wings. I had issues with the moths that were collected from sticky traps, where the sticky residue was left on the wing. Our lab used a dangerous chemical to remove the sticky residue to be able to use those specimens. I suggested to my professor that we should use Goo Gone, which is a solvent I buy at Walmart for removing stickers from glass jars that I reuse from the store. My professor was skeptical about my idea, but agreed to buy some Goo Gone to let me try my idea. She was so excited that my idea worked. It was such a simple, cost-effective, and safer solution for the issue at hand. My point here is that community scientists and non-academics have fresh perspectives to contribute new, unconventional ideas. I think, sometimes, academics can get stuck on issues to a point where it becomes difficult to see the solution, even if it is sitting right there under your kitchen sink. My work in this research project was published in an open-access journal here.

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My two cents regarding the development of an informal but scientifically-based platform:

There are many non-academic individuals, groups, and non-profits that host their own websites and platforms (e.g., thru social media like TikTok) where they share their findings on niche studies using observations or data from their backyards, public land, or online databases (like iNaturalist). This is contributing to the “big data” of ecological knowledge. There are so many people and avenues for sharing digital data that potentially valuable and “worthwhile” data can be lost in this sea of data so quickly. This is referred to as (1) “information overload” and (2) "digital obsolescence," where data is being “lost” due to the difficulties in processing, understanding, or retrieving relevant information because (1) the sheer abundance exceeds our capacity to manage it or (2) the technology to retrieve it is outdated (definitions highlighted for each term respectively).

I know there are many sources out there with valuable data. For example, @lynnharper highlighted @ceiseman’s contributions to identifying new leafminer species. A graduate student in my program has a useful website for identifying freshwater fishes in our area, among many other resources. All these resources generally fill particular niches for a region or taxon. They tend to be targeted for many different audiences and spread out across different platforms, which can make it extremely difficult to search and locate these resources, especially if you aren’t sure what exactly to look for.

For these reasons, I think there is a need to create a platform that organizes all of these different non-academic resources (though academic resources like Extension websites can also be included). This idea would resemble a website similar to WILDLAB’s “The Inventory,” where they cultivate a growing database of conservation technologies, tools, code, and projects.

Additionally, a more formalized (but informal) website for non-academics to contribute structured findings could be implemented. Preprints, as @cthawley and others mentioned, are promising ways for non-academics to contribute to academia. This is well-known in the realm of machine learning and AI advancements. Because AI developments occur so quickly and can be studied by anyone (e.g., private corporations, community scientists, non-profits, and individuals), AI-related studies are posted as pre-prints in databases like arXiv. I would argue that attempts for non-academics to publish pre-prints through current repositories may not be effective because they may be lost to the information overload phenomena. Furthermore, ecological academia does not yet seem to be trustworthy of preprints unless authors are of reputable sources (this is based on my experiences during the publishing process of 2 articles in reputable academic entomology journals, where the journal requirements clearly stated that cited sources must be peer-reviewed)

Therefore, I would argue that an intervention between academics and community scientists is necessary to develop a platform with some degree of academic credibility in order for independent community scientists to publish contributions that are notable to the academic community. While this would be a big job as @jnstuart suggested, I believe it would be a plausible and credible avenue for community scientists to make contributions. The range of biological studies using iNat data offers challenges to ensuring members are demonstrating their findings in a manner that is consistent with their field of study (e.g., taxonomic revision papers differ in structure from field experiment papers). This idea would require the development and dissemination of resources that are accessible to community scientists, while relying on both academic and non-academic volunteers for reviewal or, at least, moderation of submissions (unless it becomes a paid project?). While it sounds like a ton of work, I don’t think this is impossible to achieve. I love the idea of a “Journal of iNaturalist” or “Journal by Community Scientists”

Along these lines, I feel that the iNaturalist team could be in a unique position to implement this idea by overhauling the design and implementation of the Journal feature. Or by creating an adjacent platform, similar to how we have this iNat forum. So perhaps I should be making a similar post in the feature request topic, too?

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In short, I think many iNat users would respond to calls from academics for specific missions. Made up examples:

“We need more observations of the ticks on fence lizards. Please include this observation field.”

“Please observe the same individual plant in species-x once each month, being sure to include close-up images of any leafbuds, flower buds, etc.”

“Take observations of urban insect-y and make sure to photograph their frass.”

Many iNat observers would, (and I’ve seen many examples of this) go out of their way to accommodate these requests, and be very pleased to do so.

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Some long threads of published research using iNat data

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/published-papers-that-use-inaturalist-data-wiki-4-2024-2025/47837

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If a researcher (academic or not) wants a certain kind of data from iNatters, setting up a Project can be very helpful. (Often a Traditional project will be the kind to use.) Publicize the Project through a journal post, comments on relevant observations, a message to an iNatter who seems to be producing the kind of data of interest, maybe a Forum post. We’re usually helpful.

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Interesting and relevant theme, which I should follow up on.
An extension of that is that I feel iNat is an excellent vehicle in support of science communication to draw in more citizen science effort and draw out more interaction between plebes and academics and professional ecologists….
Further my interactions with indigeneity in general reveals that indigenous folks can have some distrust of the written word, not least because so much scientific work is inscrutable for us plebes. Maybe there’s a lesson here. Indigenous cultures often include a substantial reliance on oral tradition, which rather than being seen as a weakness, can be seen as a strength in that the spoken word is more likely to retain more context that is specific to the non-specialist audience. In other words, academics and ecological professionals might encourage more interaction from the lay public if their science communication had a higher focus on the spoken word. Just sayin’….

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It also goes without saying, that indigenous cultures can bring a certain wisdom and unique perspectives to the table….

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I got stuck here - I would really rephrase and empower that statement, non-academics can do worthwile science. While that might not be cutting-edge cancer research, for example in taxonomy, a field where iNaturalist can be particularly helpful, some of the specialists have a non-biology, non-science or even non-academic background, but do excellent science.

I am also not sure how helpful it is to draw such clear borders between “academics” and “non-academics”, especially in the context of iNaturalist and community science. A lot of the users of iNaturalist are academics, but also use iNat just for fun or the occasional science side-project.

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Karina,

For inspiration, take a look at the 4 volume series “Research Problems in Biology: Investigations for Students.” I can find viewable copies of the first two volumes online.

The backcover of the first volume in the series says:

“Here are forty suggested areas of research into aspects of biology that are still largely unexplored. These challenging investigations have been prepared by leading research biologists under the editorial guidance of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. The subjects covered include many fields of biology: animal behavior and physiology, ecology, genetics, microbiology, plant physiology, and the growth, form, and development of plants and animals. Each research suggestion is presented with a background of current knowledge in the specific area, possible approaches to the investigation, and appropriate references to the scientific literature. All the projects are in fact invitations to discovery.”

These are wonderful little books that use the expertise from university biology faculty and their students to focus high school teachers and their students and other amateur scientists on interesting questions. Even though the series was published over 60 years ago, I think the collaborative model employed would be useful today with a lot of possible uses for the iNaturalist platform.

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For those of us who enjoy the process of sorting things into categories (i.e. identifying particular taxa on iNat), a bottleneck is that only academia is allowed to define those categories. I think the iNat community is doing this sorting at a scale never really done before, so we’re constantly finding the limits of taxonomy everywhere and wishing taxonomists would move faster in resolving this or that ambiguity. Processes like describing species and defining infrageneric groups can be pretty tedious and may be low priority for academics, but they have a big impact in terms of whether or not we’re able to separate distinct organisms.

In a particular hover fly genus I’m interested in, the nearctic species are clear taxonomically, but in the neotropics we have some frustrating limits to our ability to identify species. There are some undescribed species (some of which have collected specimens somewhere already while others don’t), but also many described species which are on iNat but the literature is inadequate for matching name to photos (lack of diagrams, poor descriptions, or accessibility issues). I imagine there are similar issues for many other taxa and they can only really be solved by academics.

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Totally agree here, and I think this is one of the best ways to go about it. iNaturalist is a priceless resource for finding folks who have the time and expertise to help you collect valuable data that you might not be able to collect otherwise. Just off the top of my head I can think of a few ‘calls to action’ that I have responded to in recent years:

In general I think you’ll find that if you as a researcher are excited about something, it won’t be hard to pass that enthusiasm down to many of us here who post and identify observations for fun.

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Honestly, as a non-academic, if I seriously want to contribute to science, I plug into a project with more specific research goals than “collect a lot of data.” For example, on iNat, I joined the NE Pollinator Project. On other platforms, I spent a year contributing data to USA Phenology Network’s “Nature’s Notebook” project for Aesculus californica (then I moved out of the area). I’m glad that iNat contributes data to science, but that’s not the primary reason I use iNat.

Actually, I’d frame this question a bit differently. Speaking as an experienced educator with 25 years in nonprofit education including with adults, I’d say that many academics lack essential skills in communicating with and educating adults (actually, they may not be that great educating late adolescents either, but I’ll focus on adults). So I’d want to ask a different question: How can academics gain the skills they need to communicate effectively with non-academics? I.e., I don’t think it’s wise to assume that the primary deficit is always on the side of the non-academics. This is a difficult thing for academics to hear, but I think it’s real.

When you ask that question, then you can start looking for examples of projects that successfully engage non-academic adults in doing science. Examples I happen to know of include Great Sunflower Project (SFSU), eBird (Cornell), Signs of the Seasons (U Maine), etc.

It’s also worth looking at citizen science projects that originate outside academia. At an international level, there are projects like Earthwatch’s Global Pollinator Watch. Local projects can be equally interesting such as citizen science projects run by North and South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA), Norwell, Mass., US, which are well-designed and generate interest and loyalty in the local community.

Local projects like those of the NSRWA also demonstrate that digital projects are not the only answer. Digital projects have strengths – easier to scale up, require fewer staff, etc. – but many adults these days are looking for ways to connect in person, in ways that may feel more authentic. (This by the way helps explain why iNaturalist is starting an ambassador program, so that actual human beings give an introduction to the digital platform.)

In short, while you identify three domains – conservation, community science, and technology – I’d say you’re missing a critical fourth domain, communication, which requires a skill set that’s too often lacking in academia. From a philosophy of science perspective, science is a group human endeavor that requires high-level communication; from a history of science perspective, the professionalization of science and the academization of science which cut off “citizens” from “scientists” are actually quite recent phenomena.

My two cents worth. Your mileage may vary.

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Good point! There are quite a lot of “boundary-spanners” too. I am an iNat user, was a non-academic, but am immmersed in ecology and evolution research. I also know one user who is an environmental consultant by trade but who is working on a updated taxonomic treatment for Sisyrinchium!

I think making a distinction between iNatters and scientists is fuzzy. I would say that the purpose of making a distinction is to recognize that there is a disconnect between scientists and the general public, in the same way that two species of oak are distinct from each other, although they may hybridize to some degree. Just as there are barriers that might prevent two hybridizing species from amalgamating, there are barriers that someone without, say, a university .edu email or a position in a university research department might encounter when trying to conduct.

So based on this oak hybridization analogy I can identify two distinct stakeholders groups connected by a spectrum of “intermediate individuals“:

  • Academics who conduct research. My perception is of ecologists, taxonomists, systematists, geographers affiliated with an institution. People who do a lot of writing and publishing papers, solicit funding, and are also often very busy.
  • Non-affiliated naturalists. I perceive this as iNatters who are not affiliated with a university. Of course there is more to a naturalist than just “not academic.“ As discussed, we have some advantages in conducting research compared to the tenured professor! These people may also be very busy, but many may have more time on their hands too.

Then there is an extent of hybridization ranging from a tenured professor who posts prolifically on iNat to an enthusiast of the genus ______ (maybe a former academic, maybe not) who publishes in a niche journal. I am an intermediate on that hybridization range. Those people are important because we have a share of both perspectives!

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A key item for all Citizen scientists is to understand the critical nature of metadata, including date and detailed location data.Without key metadata, it may not be possible to ID, say, a bat species acoustically (my specialty, and as one of the pioneers from the 1990s, I have been mentoring and teaching since then). The key for bat acoustics is that ALL contributions to iNat are valid voucher records for when and where a critter was documented. The call file needs to be included, and blurry screen captures of phones are useless. The Auto ID algorithms for Neotropical spp. are usually only 35% correct, and as it is possible to have up to 5 species recorded in the same 15-second file, they will only guess at the ID of one. Very important contribution these people can make IF they take another minute or so to upload the acoustic files and location data. Good luck with your project. Cheers, Bruce

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I do agree that non-academics do worthwhile science!

I used the terms “academics” and “non-academics/community scientists” based on the general terms used in the original post that my post was inspired from. To me, the distinction is largely based on academics being university-affiliated and/or supported by research grants, and non-academics being those who are not university-affiliated nor supported by grants. Based on that distinction, there are still many different categories of “non-academics,” which @arnanthescout describes pretty well.

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Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll look for the online copies. I would love to read something like this as some food for thought in the iNat context!

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Thanks for your thoughts and for the examples @dlevitis and @rynaturalist! It is good to know that this direct interaction is a productive way for iNat observers to produce valuable observations for researchers. I wonder if there are other ways that researchers can better support iNat observers and users who are analyzing data or making discoveries using iNat data.

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I appreciate your insight on the indigenous perspective! I agree that iNat is an excellent vehicle for facilitating science communication across a variety of different backgrounds. I hope that platforums such as this iNat Forum can help make those connections between different perspectives. Perhaps science communication from the academic side needs more effort to produce oral forms of communications, like short video clips (as opposed to something like website articles)?

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I appreciate your insights, @danlharp! It’s good to know that some iNat observers are excited about contributing to projects with specific goals.

I like this counter-question, since I recognize that academics are not usually educated on the proper skills to communicate effectively with non-academics. I think this academic skill deficit is being realized and addressed, albeit slowly. After all, science is no good if it is not shared properly with others. One of my professors had emphasized this to me during my early undergrad, and it always stuck with me, so I am personally trying to learn and address this gap in my own career.

More and more I have been realizing the importance of scientific communication, and I am glad that you described it as a fourth domain. The way I see it, communication is what ties those three domains together. I like to imagine that each of the three domains are overlapping circles (a 3-circle Venn diagram) that are placed inside a larger circle to bind them together, since even the integration of two domains requires effective communication.

In your experience, what is one specific skill that academics could improve on to communicate more effectively? Is it something simple like avoiding niche jargon and details, or something more nuanced, like our methods of communication (e.g., digital books/websites/videos, in-person seminars)?

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