Citizen Science Case Studies

Licensing & permissions

At the start of the project, The Big Rock Pool Challenge, data were already being collected at the existing Plymouth and Falmouth sites, so permission was already granted. When bringing in new sites because of the creation of new hubs around the UK, the licensing foreach survey site must be considered. This can be challenging due to difficulties identifying landowners from whom to request permission to access the survey sites, especially in the intertidal zone.  

Considerations were also made for the data licensing and the use of iNaturalist. The images and data have different permissions, and itis encouraged by record centres to change the licensing for records collected using the app from CC-BY-NC (default) to CC-BY.

Verification & quality control

From the start of the project the team was aware that iNaturalist data would need to be verified to ensure there was no cheating in the games and due to a responsibility to verify the quality of their own records in the wider context of iNaturalist. A process for verification by project volunteers was developed to check the records. One of the key benefits of using iNaturalist is the in-built validation checks to ensure mandatory metadata is captured.

Processing

Processing is done automatically by iNaturalist, with all records standardized to the same format and exported via the app so further data processing was not planned.

Sharing

During the planning process there was a consultation with DASSH and other experts from NBN to ensure that data would flow from iNaturalist to DASSH and NBN, where it would be openly available, taking into consideration any potential bottlenecks caused by the validation process.  
There was also a requirement to have a simple download on the website so the public can download of the data with simple instruction.