Data maintenance
In the secure project's administration tool, all project administrators can access all the submission by the users. We provide an easy-to-use interface to publish/unpublish, trash or edit entries in a Citizen Science project's data set in real-time. All spots are presented with images, categories and every bit of information, users can contribute to the Citizen science app. Various filter and sort options are available for browsing or searching the data. The SPOTTERON Data Administration Interface leaves you in full control of the submission and contributions by users in your Citizen Science app. All user comments made by the Citizen Scientists in your app are available in their own section for community management. You can instantly remove or edit comments.
With the various features of the SPOTTERON Data Quality Pack, the data can be co-managed with the community. Users in the app can report data points to your team and you can promote experienced users or team member accounts to be data moderators.
In addition to managing the contributions and the community comments, the Data Administration Interface offers advanced functionalities from the SPOTTERON Community Pack to run your Citizen Science project. You can create map-based events in the app and send out custom push messages to everyone in the app's community on the fly. These advanced tools from the provide a unique set of communication features, which enable not only to collect data but to interact with the participants and integrate the Citizen Science app in real-life activities.
Data storage
All submitted entries in Citizen Science projects, running on the SPOTTERON platform are stored in our secure server cloud, which provides stable and high performance for all apps through a scaleable server environment. Every access is encrypted by state-of-the-art SSL/TLS for high security. Backup routines are in place to protect against data loss. We take data security very seriously and have industry-standard measurements in place to protect your data.
Data export
As a logged in project administrator, you can always download a complete set of all observations at any time in the administration interface. Furthermore, the data can be filtered live by all available data fields like categories, attributes and additional information. Our export standard format is CSV, ensuring how compatibility with external tools, from commercial software to open source. In addition, we can provide API access for your project for a yearly maintenance fee, which enables customized and automatic data exchange with other web services and your own IT tools.
As a secondary data export, we can provide user account information for those users, who have agreed e.g. to receive your newsletter at the first start of the apps for compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This customizable solution can be tailored to your project needs for adding your own custom text to the agreement dialogue form.
Example CSV data export screenshot
Licenses
In compliance with the EU GDPR and the included "right to forget", all media content on the SPOTTERON platform is licensed as Creative Commons Zero (CC:0), which allows us to keep your scientific data complete while still being able to allow users to delete all their personal data and anonymize all their contributions directly within the Citizen Science app's setting panel.
Regarding Open Data, we support projects which want to publish their submissions publicly. The public export of the collected data set without any personal user data contains all non-sensitive database tables and can be distributed online by the project automatically or on a manual basis. The data-set of an Open Data Citizen Science project can be made available for the public as an instant download in the interactive Map (Web-App). You can choose any Open Data license, under which your project's data-set is going to be published. A licence agreement dialogue along with a confirmation button is shown to all users who want to download the data set.
Data Migration
For already running Citizen Science projects which want to migrate to the SPOTTERON platform, we offer a free data import of all their observations into the new apps. We can also import user accounts if the users have given their informed consent prior to the process.