Overcoming the challenges of public data archiving for citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes

Abstract

Public data archiving (PDA) is widely advocated as a means of achieving open data standards, leading to improved data preservation, increased scientific reproducibility, and transparency, as well as additional data use. Public data archiving was primarily conceived to archive data from short‐term, single‐purpose scientific studies. It is now more widely applied, including to large‐scale citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes which combine the efforts of volunteers with professional scientists. This may affect the financial security of such schemes by reducing income from data and analytical services. Communication between scheme organizers and researchers may be disrupted, reducing scientific quality and impeding scheme development. It may also have an impact on the participation of some volunteers. Synthesis and applications. In response to the challenges of public data archiving for citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes, the archive function of scheme organizations should be better recognized by those promoting open data principles. Increased financial support from the public sector or from commercial or academic data users may offset financial risk. Those in favour of public data archiving should do more to facilitate communication between nonscheme users and the originating schemes, while a more flexible approach to data archiving may be required to address potential impacts on volunteer participation.

Opinions of citizen scientists on open access to UK butterfly and moth occurrence data

“…They found that only 12.3% of biodiversity recorders in the Netherlands supported unconditional reuse of their data, while 36.7% were opposed to commercial use of their data. Current limitations to access and reuse of citizen science data are often attributed to the scientists or organisations running citizen science projects, who may face a range of technological, economic and cultural barriers and disincentives to data sharing (Reichman et al 2011;Schmidt et al 2016;Groom et al 2017;Pearce-Higgins et al 2018). However, our UK results and those from the Netherlands suggest that some limitation is in accordance with the wishes and expectations of citizen science participants.…”

“…Progress towards a more open approach in ecology is hindered by technological and cultural barriers, but solutions and incentives have emerged, alongside new obligations for public data archiving from funding organisations and scientific journals (Reichman et al 2011;Michener 2015;Nosek et al 2015;Culina et al 2018a). Nevertheless, concerns remain about open access to ecological data, and while the views of scientists and organisations have been reported (Moles et al 2013;Mills et al 2015;Pearce-Higgins et al 2018;Tulloch et al 2018), the opinions of citizen scientists themselves have been overlooked.…”

“…This may simply be because projects and their participants are continuing the historical legacy of mindsets, relationships and practices formed long before the advent of modern citizen science (Strasser et al 2019) and do not conform to its expectations around open access. Alternatively, access to data may be restricted deliberately due to legitimate concerns from project organisers (Pearce-Higgins et al 2018;Tulloch et al 2018). One such concern is that unintended negative consequences of open access, for example harm to threatened species, could lead citizen scientists to cease participation, undermining project viability.…”

Using a Citizen Science Approach with German Horse Owners to Study the Locomotion Behaviour of Horses on Pasture

“…Despite these encouraging findings there are also constraints which have to be taken into consideration. Firstly, data quality is a critical issue in citizen science studies and has often been viewed with scepticism in recent years [8,13,[45][46][47]. In addition to challenges common to any experimental approach, such as damage or loss of recording units, implementation by the farmers plays an important role.…”

Quantifying the contribution of citizen science to broad‐scale ecological databases

“…; Pearce‐Higgins et al . ). Typically, citizen‐science programs consist of volunteers or non‐professionals who undergo training in sampling methods and assist in collecting data about phenomena such as species presence, weather, water quality, and environmental pollution (Figure ; Dickinson et al .…”