Abstract:
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iNaturalist defines itself as an “online social network of people sharing biodiversity
information to help each other learn about nature” and it is likely one of the largest citizen science
web portals in the world, as every year millions of observations across thousands of species are
gathered and collectively compiled by an engaged community of nearly 3 million users (November
2023). The strengths and potentialities that explain the success of the platform are reviewed and
include, among others, its usability and low technical requirements, immediacy, open-access, the
possibility of interacting with other users, artificial-intelligence-aided identification, versatility and
automatic incorporation of the validated records to GBIF. iNaturalist has, however, features that
scientists need to carefully consider when using it for their research, making sure that the quality of
observations does not limit or hinder its usefulness in plant research. While these are identified (e.g.,
the lack of representative photographs for many observations or the relatively frequent identification
errors), we provide some suggestions to overcome them and, by doing so, improve the use and add
value to iNaturalist for plant research. |