Platform(s): website, mobile.
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: N/A
Description of need:
Bear with me - just a thought. What if the iNat observations by a particular user could become the official public data repository of ecological data (e.g. population studies) when that user publishes a paper using the biodiversity reported in the observations?
iNat allows adding multiple images and gifs, as well as descriptions - and the community benefits from those observations. For papers, the main beneficiaries are those who read the paper, and that number is limited.
Let’s use this example: a study reports on the ecology and behavior of a burrowing lizard population. The study followed 20 individuals over various seasons, observing burrow activities, basking patterns, mating, territoriality, tolerance display, parenting, etc.
Scientific papers often report these data as a table or text description, and limited number of figures with maps or photographs within the article body. Thus, the author needs to pick up representative data to display as example, while probably the author might have considerable examples from all the 20 individuals that would never been shown. The rest of the existing data goes to excel tables and other attachments rarely seen. If DNA data are included, the sequences do go to a permanent repository, but this is not the case for photos/videos from individuals. Behavior studies also have limited availability to attach gifs or videos.
Feature request details:
The feature request would require general consensus beyond iNat platform and endorsement from the scientific editorial community. It would work this way:
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Author has disclosed in the paper that each of those 20 lizards was ‘named’ (1-20, pen names, etc.). Author has data from lizard # 5 from January observed fitting with another lizard. Then in April it was mating with another lizard; observed pregnant in August; then in December it was observed basking next to the burrow. In the paper, the author references in the table the iNat observation, so the readers can see each behaviour by each lizard on each reported instance as available.
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The paper is accepted but, hitherto, there is no mandatory requirement to report photographs and videos of the study group. The iNat records might be deleted and edited by the author/user as it is now. Hence, iNat is not a reliable data repository unless…
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User/author uploads the data to iNat and select the feature for locking them permanently, similar to when submitting DNA sequences to NCBI. That means there is no option to change or deleting that observation unless an official request (form and chain of approvals).
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Maybe in this case, the group of observations are uploaded as part of a ‘project’ (but not the way current projects work). Let’s call it ‘Study’. The study has a name (linked to the scientific paper), and a code. Each observation could be grouped or not, depending on the study. For this case, group could be by lizard name. So, all the behaviour for lizard #5 would be in their own group. iNat IDs could be assigned differently (than this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/369965902), so it could have a ‘Study’ code, less random and uniformed when citing them in the scientific paper (like this (see under ‘ID’) https://shorturl.at/7DGHq).
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iNat and the Journal officially recognizes this (like via a verifiable link at the journal submission or something like that), then the observations become the permanent data repository.
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Earlier observations submitted by the User/Author could be assigned to a ‘Study’, and locked.
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All the observations within the ‘Study’ continue to be shown normally in iNat, accessible for verification, comments, ID changes, etc. They just have metadata that link them to the the journal.