Patterns of community science data use in peer-reviewed research on biodiversity

Abstract

Community science (“citizen science”) represents a potentially abundant and inexpensive source of information on biodiversity. However, analyzing such data has inherent challenges that may limit their use in formal biodiversity research. The objective of this study was to explore the patterns in the uptake of community science data in the peer-reviewed biodiversity literature, to assess current uses and reveal gaps. Specifically, we reviewed a sample of 334 peer-reviewed scientific articles to investigate how the use of community science data varied among taxonomic groups and geographic regions, and what threats to biodiversity were examined. A greater proportion of the overall biodiversity literature used community science data for research on vertebrates, and for research based in Africa. Literature in certain countries used a wider breadth of projects, while others made repeated use of comparably fewer datasets. Community science efforts were largely used to measure abundance, trends, distributions, and range shifts. However, few articles linked these metrics to any particular threats to biodiversity. Furthermore, community science data were used infrequently for research on threatened species and limited mostly to count data rather than collecting more specific information such as life history, phenological or genetic data, suggesting that community science may be underutilized for these key aspects of biodiversity conservation research. We conclude that even with the rise of community science data use in research, there remains tremendous potential to better use these existing datasets. Our results highlight several important gaps in the translation of biodiversity data to conservation research and practice.