Looking for advice on: how to cite my observations?

[jimenabisso]

I wanted to use APA citation style to add references for a school project were I am presenting pictures of observations that I uploaded to INat but was not sure of how to cite them or how should my bibliography should look like

Thanks!

[cthawley]

I’m not sure if there is a specific APA rule for this but you could always just use the format for a webpage and cite the page for the observation.

[susanhewitt]

@cthawley

you could always just use the format for a webpage and cite the page for the observation.

You would cite yourself as the author.

[pisum]

if you’re talking about citing individual observations, i would cite them the same way as i would cite a YouTube video or social media post. for example, see Social Media - APA Style 7th Edition: Citing Your Sources - Research Guides at University of Southern California (usc.edu), How to Cite a YouTube Video in APA | EasyBib Citations, or there are plenty of other references online for that sort of thing.

[jimenabisso]

Thank you!!

[thebeachcomber]

related case: I’m writing a short paper at the moment, and want to cite this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/30986750. Normally I’d just use the GBIF citation, but I want to also cite the description, which in this case is original text by the observer relevant to the observation, and has been written up as a ‘pseudo-paper’ with references. As far as I interpret it, the GBIF citation only applies to the data point itself (?). Even if the GBIF citation covers the description as well, I’m uncomfortable using ‘Kueda 2021’ (which is what it says to use) when it was the observer that wrote that text.

The observer actually created their own citation per se:

“Williams, E. H., Jr. and L. Bunkley-Williams. 2019b. New host, Australian Herring, Arripis georgianus (Valenciennes, 1831), and Australian Indian Ocean locality record for the Striped Gooseneck Barnacle, Conchoderma virgatum Spengler, 1789, off Busselton Jetty, Australia. Research Quality Report, iNaturalist.org, 16 August (open access) [422]”

but it’s ‘made up’ in the sense that it’s not searchable anywhere. Thoughts on how to cite this?

[pisum]

@thebeachcomber

The observer actually created their own citation per se:

“Williams, E. H., Jr. and L. Bunkley-Williams. 2019b. New host, Australian Herring, Arripis georgianus (Valenciennes, 1831), and Australian Indian Ocean locality record for the Striped Gooseneck Barnacle, Conchoderma virgatum Spengler, 1789, off Busselton Jetty, Australia. Research Quality Report, iNaturalist.org, 16 August (open access) [422]”

but it’s ‘made up’ in the sense that it’s not searchable anywhere.

i can find the observation if i search for Conchoderma virgatum and look for observations created near 16 Aug 2019 by someone whose user name looks like e*williams. something problematic here is that the observation was submitted using Atlantic Daylight Time (ADT). so that based on that, the date submitted would be 17 Aug 2019, which makes it not entirely straightforward to find the observation.

if you want to keep most of the general format of the observer’s own citation, i think you could greatly improve it simply by including the entire URL of the specific observation.

personally, i would also add the iNaturalist user name (since it’s not entirely clear how to tie the observers’ actual names to the user name otherwise in this case, as it’s not clarified in the user profile), and i would also include the observed date, along with the date that i viewed the observation. these small tweaks would make it much easier to find the actual observation.

[thebeachcomber]

cheers, makes sense :)