Guidelines and best practices for the scientific use of global iNaturalist data

Corey T Callaghan , Caitlin J Campbell, Jane Widness, Benjamin R Goldstein, Thomas Mesaglio , Carrie Seltzer, Tony Iwane, Robert Guralnick, Brittany M. Mason

Participatory science platforms are undoubtedly changing how biodiversity research is being conducted. Among these, iNaturalist has emerged as the largest and most widely used global infrastructure for biodiversity observation data, generating millions of new records each year and contributing substantially to global biodiversity repositories such as GBIF. As a result, iNaturalist data are increasingly used across ecology, conservation biology, computer vision, biogeography, education, and environmental decision-making. But despite this rapid uptake, the structure, limitations, and analytical considerations of iNaturalist data remain poorly understood by many researchers. Our aim is to provide a clear and comprehensive guide for effectively using iNaturalist data in research. We first provide an overview of iNaturalist data and how it is produced and the resulting implications for biodiversity research. We then provide a “deep-dive” into the critical data components and metadata, details on the various ways to access iNaturalist data, general guidelines on steps to take when using the data in analyses, and guidance on citing and attributing the data with a focus on reproducibility.