scholarly journals How A Citizen Scientist Can Reuse & Link Biodiversity Heritage Library Data

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e25298
Author(s):  
Siobhan Leachman
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
Citizen Scientist ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Internet Search Engine ◽  
Effective Dissemination ◽  
Biodiversity Information

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) provides open access to over 54 million pages of biodiversity literature. Much of this literature is either in the public domain or is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons framework. Anyone can therefore freely reuse much of the information and data provided by BHL. This presentation will outline how the work of a citizen scientist using BHL content might benefit research scientists. It will discuss how a citizen scientist can reuse and link BHL literature and data in Wikipedia and Wikidata. It will explain the research efficiencies that can be obtained through this reuse and linking, for example through the consolidation of database identifiers. The presentation will outline the subsequent reuse of the BHL data added to Wikipedia and Wikidata by the internet search engine Google. It will discuss an example of the linking of this information in the citizen science observation platform iNaturalist. The presentation will explain how BHL, as a result of its open reuse licensing of information and data, helps in the creation of more accurate citizen science generated biodiversity data and assists with the wider and more effective dissemination of biodiversity information.

scholarly journals Resisting the Resistance: Resisting Copyright and Promoting Alternatives

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Frosio
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Copyright Protection ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Public Mind ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The Public ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Global Movements

This article discusses the resistance to the Digital Revolution and the emergence of a social movement “resisting the resistance.” Mass empowerment has political implications that may provoke reactionary counteractions. Ultimately—as I have discussed elsewhere—resistance to the Digital Revolution can be seen as a response to Baudrillard’s call to a return to prodigality beyond the structural scarcity of the capitalistic market economy. In Baudrillard’s terms, by increasingly commodifying knowledge and expanding copyright protection, we are taming limitless power with artificial scarcity to keep in place a dialectic of penury and unlimited need. In this paper, I will focus on certain global movements that do resist copyright expansion, such as creative commons, the open access movement, the Pirate Party, the A2K movement and cultural environmentalism. A nuanced discussion of these campaigns must account for the irrelevance of copyright in the public mind, the emergence of new economics of digital content distribution in the Internet, the idea of the death of copyright, and the demise of traditional gatekeepers. Scholarly and market alternatives to traditional copyright merit consideration here, as well. I will conclude my review of this movement “resisting the resistance” to the Digital Revolution by sketching out a roadmap for copyright reform that builds upon its vision.

scholarly journals Contribution of Citizen Science to Biodiversity Data Mobilization in Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalya Ivanova ◽  
Maxim Shashkov
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Breeding Bird ◽  
Breeding Bird Atlas ◽  
Research Grade ◽  
Taxonomic Groups ◽  
Species Occurrences ◽  
Biodiversity Information

Currently Russia doesn't have a national biodiversity information system, and is still not a GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) member. Nevertheless, GBIF is the largest source of biodiversity data for Russia. As of August 2020, >5M species occurrences were available through the GBIF portal, of which 54% were published by Russian organisations. There are 107 institutions from Russia that have become GBIF publishers and 357 datasets have been published. The important trend of data mobilization in Russia is driven by the considerable contribution of citizen science. The most popular platform is iNaturalist. This year, the related GBIF dataset (Ueda 2020) became the largest one for Russia (793,049 species occurrences as of 2020-08-11). The first observation for Russia was posted in 2011, but iNaturalist started becoming popular in 2017. That year, 88 observers added >4500 observations that represented 1390 new species for Russia, 7- and 2-fold more respectively, than for the previous 6 years. Now we have nearly 12,000 observers, about 15,000 observed species and >1M research-grade observations. The ratio of observations for Tracheophyta, Chordata, and Arthropoda in Russia is different compared to the global scale. There are almost an equal amount of observations in the global iNaturalist GBIF dataset for these groups. At the same time in Russia, vascular plants make up 2/3rds of the observations. That is due to the "Flora of Russia" project, which attracted many professional botanists both as observers and experts. Thanks to their activity, Russia has a high proportion of research-grade observations in iNaturalist, 78% versus 60% globally. Another consequence of wide participation by professional researchers is the high rate of species accumulation. For some taxonomic groups conspicuous species were already revealed. There are about 850 bird species in Russia of which 398 species were observed in 2018, and only 83 new species in 2019. Currently, the number of new species recorded over time is decreasing despite the increase in observers and overall user activity. Russian iNaturalist observers have shared a lot of archive photos (taken during past years). In 2018, it was nearly 1/4 of the total number of observations and about 3/4 of new species for the year, with similar trends observed during 2019. Usually archive photos are posted from December until April, but the 2020 pandemic lockdown spurred a new wave of archive photo mobilisation in April and May. There are many iNaturalist projects for protected areas in Russia: 27 for strict nature reserves and national parks, and about 300 for others. About 100,000 observations (7.5% of all Russian observations) from the umbrella project "Protected areas of Russia" represent >34% of the species diversity observed in Russia. For some regions, e.g., Novosibirsk, Nizhniy Novgorod and Vladimir Oblasts, almost all protected areas are covered by iNaturalist projects, and are often their only source of available biodiversity data. There are also other popular citizen science platforms developed by Russian researchers. The first one is the Russian birdwatching network RU-BIRDS.RU. The related GBIF dataset (Ukolov et al. 2019) is the third largest dataset for Russia (>370,000 species occurrences). Another Russian citizen science system is wildlifemonitoring.ru, which includes thematic resources for different taxonomic groups of vertebrates. This is the crowd-sourced web-GIS maintained by the Siberian Environmental Center NGO in Novosibirsk. It is noteworthy that iNaturalist activities in Russia are developed more as a social network than as a way to attract volunteers to participate in scientific research. Of 746 citations in the iNaturalist dataset, only 18 articles include co-authors from Russia. iNaturalist data are used for the management of regional red lists (in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Novosibirsk Oblast and others), and as an additional information source for regional inventories. RU-BIRDS data were used in the European Russia Breeding Bird Atlas and the new edition of the European Breeding Bird Atlas. In Russia, citizen science activities significantly contribute to filling gaps in the global biodiversity map. However, Russian iNaturalist observations available through GBIF originate from the USA. It is not ideal, because the iNaturalist GBIF dataset is growing rapidly, and in the future it will represent more than all other datasets for Russia combined. In our opinion, iNaturalist data should be repatriated during the process of publishing through GBIF, as it is implemented for the eBird dataset (Levatich and Ligocki 2020).

scholarly journals A Framework of Observer-Based Biases in Citizen Science Biodiversity Monitoring: Semi-Structuring Unstructured Biodiversity Monitoring Protocols

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Arazy ◽  
Dan Malkinson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Temporal Distribution ◽  
Biodiversity Monitoring ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Science Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Monitoring Protocols ◽  
And Behavior

Citizen science, whereby ordinary citizens participate in scientific endeavors, is widely used for biodiversity monitoring, most commonly by relying on unstructured monitoring approaches. Notwithstanding the potential of unstructured citizen science to engage the public and collect large amounts of biodiversity data, observers’ considerations regarding what, where and when to monitor result in biases in the aggregate database, thus impeding the ability to draw conclusions about trends in species’ spatio-temporal distribution. Hence, the goal of this study is to enhance our understanding of observer-based biases in citizen science for biodiversity monitoring. Toward this goals we: (a) develop a conceptual framework of observers’ decision-making process along the steps of monitor – > record and share, identifying the considerations that take place at each step, specifically highlighting the factors that influence the decisions of whether to record an observation (b) propose an approach for operationalizing the framework using a targeted and focused questionnaire, which gauges observers’ preferences and behavior throughout the decision-making steps, and (c) illustrate the questionnaire’s ability to capture the factors driving observer-based biases by employing data from a local project on the iNaturalist platform. Our discussion highlights the paper’s theoretical contributions and proposes ways in which our approach for semi-structuring unstructured citizen science data could be used to mitigate observer-based biases, potentially making the collected biodiversity data usable for scientific and regulatory purposes.

scholarly journals Making Biodiversity Data Social, Shareable, and Scalable: Reflections on iNaturalist & citizen science

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Biodiversity Informatics ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Advance Research ◽  
Biodiversity Information

Since 2008, iNaturalist has been crowdsourcing identifications for biodiversity observations collected by citizen scientists. Today iNaturalist has over 25 million records of wild biodiversity with photo or audio evidence, from every country, representing more than 230,000 species, collected by over 700,000 people, and with 90,000 people helping others with identifications. Hundreds of publications have used iNaturalist data to advance research, conservation, and policy. There are three key themes that iNaturalist has embraced: social interaction; shareability of data, tools, and code; and scalability of the platform and community. The keynote will share reflections on what has (and has not) worked for iNaturalist while drawing on other examples from biodiversity informatics and citizen science. Insights about user motivations, synergistic collaborations, and strategic decisions about scaling offer some transferable approaches to address the broadly applicable questions: Which species is represented? How do we make the best use of the available biodiversity information? And how do we build something viable and enduring in the process?

Open Educational Resources in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Stephen Tsekea
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Learning Resources ◽  
Digital Learning ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
The Public ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Digital Learning Resources

The open access movement came as a result of the rising cost of learning materials and the need for having publicly funded research or works available on the public domain. This is a movement which is in support of having educational learning resources freely available on the internet. Despite the intellectual properly issues surrounding use of learning resources, many institutions in Africa are adopting these digital learning resources. The chapter documents how the OER movement started, its advantages and disadvantages, copyright and licensing issues, models, and challenges in adopting OERs.

scholarly journals Participatory Monitoring—A Citizen Science Approach for Coastal Environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Kasten ◽  
Stuart R. Jenkins ◽  
Ronaldo A. Christofoletti
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Scientific Quality ◽  
Coastal Environments ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Participatory Monitoring ◽  
The Public ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Proper Training

In this article the authors share their experiences, results, and lessons learned during the creation of a coastal biodiversity participatory monitoring initiative. Throughout 2019, we delivered five training workshops to 51 citizen scientists. Data collected by the citizens scientists were validated by checking its similarities against that gathered by specialists. High similarity values were found, indicating that, if proper training is provided, there is a great potential for citizen scientists to contribute biodiversity data with high value. During this process a certain level of variation in data produced by specialists was found, drawing attention to the need for prior alignment among specialists who may offer training for citizens. In addition, despite overall similar results between specialists and participants, some differences emerged in particular parts of the habitat; for example, the bivalve zones presented higher complexity and hence greater challenge. Identifying key challenges for participants is key to developing appropriate citizen science protocols. Here it is provided preliminary evidence that supports the use of the monitoring protocol to obtain biodiversity data gathered by citizen scientists, assuring its scientific quality. Enhancing participation by the community and specialists is key to further validate the approach and to effectively expand such protocols, enhancing the level of biodiversity data collection. In order to promote participation, and maintain citizen scientist engagement in the initiative, it is recommended the development of new investigations that assess the interests and motivations of the public to take part. It is also fundamentally important to have an effective strategy to communicate the results of participants’ monitoring and their applicability to local and global issues, thus maximizing the continuity of engagement of citizen scientists.

Online Resources for Astronomy Education and Outreach

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S367) ◽  
pp. 105-115
Author(s):  
Chris Impey
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Online Resources ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Instructional Tools ◽  
Astronomy Education ◽  
Concept Inventories ◽  
Education And Outreach ◽  
Public Audience

AbstractThe growth of the Internet has facilitated the easy availability of resources for teaching astronomy and doing astronomy outreach. This overview concentrates on resources that are free or open access. Basic teaching materials like textbooks and lab activities can be found, along with higher level items such as concept inventories and interactive instructional tools. There is also a small but growing research literature on astronomy instruction to be found online. Astronomers engaged in outreach can have access to large image collections, tools for doing citizen science, and planetarium apps. These resources are of enormous value to both novice and seasoned instructors, and anyone conveying the excitement of astronomy to a public audience.

scholarly journals The Living Atlases Community: Communication and documentation

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Elise Lecoq ◽  
Vicente Ruiz Jurado
Keyword(s):  
End Users ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Technical Documentation ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Network Nodes ◽  
Twitter Account ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
One Year ◽  
Biodiversity Information

Managers and developers from organizations within the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) network nodes using the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) modules have created the Living Atlases (LA) community. Since the beginning, two of our priorities have been the technical guides and communication inside and outside our network. A community can not be sustainable without useful technical documentation, as members must work by themselves as much as possible. Without communication, a community cannot grow either. More than one year ago, the Living Atlases community hired a technical coordinator, Vicente J. Ruiz Jurado. With the help of other participants, he greatly improved our technical documentation with the Living Atlas Quick Start Guide and increased communication with remote support sessions. The helpdesk, through the use of the LA Slack channel, has been improved as well. We have also increased our visibility on the Internet with our website and our Twitter account. Over the last few years, we have focused our work on end-users, with dedicated workshops, including exercises made by participants for their users and two videos showing how a Living Atlas works (How to search and download biodiversity data in an Atlas and How to use regions/spatial module in an Atlas).

scholarly journals KELAS ONLINE UNTUK MENINGKATKAN PENERAPAN PROTOKOL KESEHATAN DI MASYARAKAT SELAMA PANDEMI COVID19

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Aditya Sukma Pawitra
Keyword(s):  
Community Service ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Online Classes ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Online Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Access Information ◽  
The Government

Health protocol is one of the main keys in dealing with the spread of the corona virus. The government and health communicators face serious challenges when educating the public to always use masks, keep their distance and wash their hands with soap. Especially in the digital era of information, all people can access information on the internet without limits. The spread of hoaxes and infodemics has further reduced public compliance in implementing health protocols. The purpose of implementing this community service is to prevent the spread of the infodemics so that the public can play a positive role in preventing the transmission of COVID19 by implementing proper health protocols. The community service method was carried out by implementing online classes using the WhatsApp group platform and zoom meetings. The number of participants involved was 112 people. Small discussion always happened every day both among the participants and with the community service team. Information provided to participants in the form of posters / flyers. The online class was held for 3 months starting in July 2020. Measurement of participants' understanding was carried out at the beginning and at the end of the activity through google form. The analysis showed that online class delivery was effective, as indicated by a positive and significant increase in understanding of the variables of masks, maintaining distance and washing hands with soap. So it might be concluded that by providing information intensively and through small discussion, the public will increasingly understand the conditions of the pandemic and will play a role in breaking the chain of transmission of COVID19abstrak  10.20473/jlm.v5i1.2021.9-18 Open acces under CC BY-SA license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Protokol kesehatan menjadi salah satu kunci utama dalam menangani meluasnya persebaran virus corona. Pemerintah dan komunikator kesehatan menghadapi tantangan berat saat memberikan sosialisasi kepada masyarakat agar terbiasa selalu menggunakan masker, menjaga jarak dan selalu mencuci tangan dengan sabun. Terlebih di era digital informasi, seluruh masyarakat dapat mengakses informasi di internet tanpa batas. Merebaknya berita hoaks dan infodemi semakin mengurangi kepatuhan masyarakat dalam menjalankan protokol kesehatan. Tujuan pelaksanaan pengabdian masyarakat ini adalah untuk mencegah menyebarnya infodemi sehingga masyarakat dapat berperan positif dalam mencegah penularan COVID19 dengan menerapkan protokol kesehatan dengan benar. Metode pengabdian masyarakat dilakukan dengan pelaksanaan kelas online menggunakan platform whatsapp group dan zoom meeting. Jumlah peserta yang terlibat 112 orang. Diskusi ringan selalu terjadi setiap hari baik di kalangan peserta maupun dengan tim pengabdian masyarakat. Informasi yang diberikan kepada peserta berupa poster/flyer. Pelaksaan kelas online ini dilakukan selama 3 bulan dimulai sejak bulan Juli 2020. Pengukuran pemahaman peserta dilakukan diawal dan di akhir kegiatan melalui google form. Analisis menunjukkan penyampaian kelas online berjalan efektif yang ditunjukkan dengan peningkatan pemahaman yang positif dan signifikan pada variabel masker, jaga jarak dan cuci tangan pakai sabun. Sehingga dapat disimpulkan bahwa dengan pemberian informasi secara intensif dan melalui diskusi ringan, masyarakat akan semakin memahami kondisi pandemik dan akan berperan dalam memutus rantai penularan COVID19. 

scholarly journals Sette scritti politici liberi

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Immanuel Kant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Open Access ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
Open Access Publication ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The French Revolution

At the end of the eighteenth century, before and during the French Revolution, Kant wrote intensively about politics. This book brings together the translations of his principal philosophical-political works, with the editor's annotations, from the essay on Enlightenment through to the writing on progress. The texts are subject to a Creative Commons licence, so that they can be amended without restrictions, retaining the same rights. Open access publication alone can achieve freedom in the public use of reason. The decision to free a classic work from economic monopoly and censure is intended to demonstrate that open access is not an academic theory but a reality that can give value and meaning to the establishment of a public university. Making Kant read means much more than merely reading him.

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