Publish openly

In our cooperation with society and our Citizen Scientists, it is particularly important for us to work as transparently as possible. For us, this also means publishing roadkill reports, developments and scientific articles openly. Open publication means that the reports, developments and results can be found online, are readable, usable and free of charge. We would also like to invite you to participate in the publications, be it through new ideas, critical comments or collaboration in writing the publications. 

Roadkill Reports

As soon as a roadkill is reported, it is visible on our interactive map. If you are registered, you can download and use your own reports at any time.

All roadkill reports are checked and can be viewed and downloaded online after a certain processing time. We have described how the reports are reviewed, where they can be found and how they are correctly cited in the dataset section. This data can be used freely if it is stated that it is data from the project Roadkill and is cited correctly. In this way we want to ensure that recognition is guaranteed for all project participants.

Developments

Weekly Reports

At the beginning of each week, we give a brief insight into the previous week's reports in our weekly reports (in German). In this way, we show very promptly which animals are currently being reported, where difficulties have arisen and how many citizen scientists have reported roadkills this week. 

Basic analyses

Every three months, we publish an overview of the reported animals of the previous months in order to be able to give quick feedback on what has happened in the project. The basic analyses contain more detailed statistics on how many Citizen Scientists have reported how many roadkills (and which animal groups) and how many protected species (according to IUCN) have been reported in the last three months. Furthermore, these results are compared with the results of the previous basic analyses in order to show seasonal changes. In addition, the basic analyses contain a summary on research topics of the submitted research questions and observations of the past three months.

Annual analyses

The annual analyses will analyse roadkill reports once a year, focusing on detailed information on the surrounding landscapes of the five most frequently reported species and the type of road on which the animals were reported. The surrounding landscape and the type of road (e.g. motorway, interurban) on which roadkills were reported contribute to the understanding of the influence of the landscape and various road features on biodiversity.

In addition, all citizen scientists in the project can vote once a year on which research topics from the past basic analyses they find most attractive. The research topic with the most votes will serve as the basis for a new scientific article. To do this, the underlying questions and observations in the research topic are first refined into a research question by the research team together with the submitters. This research question will then be worked on and developed into a scientific article. We invite you to participate in the whole process according to your possibilities and time resources.

Scientific article

All scientific articles that we write in the project team on the basis of the reports in the project Roadkill are published in the public domain. This means that no one has to pay to read the results from the project. This may sound a bit strange, but it is quite common to have to pay about 50€ to publishers to be able to read a scientific article. In order to be able to publish articles in an open way in reputable journals, so that readers don't have to pay anything for them, authors have to pay between several hundred and several thousand euros per article. However, since these articles are usually written in English, in technical language and therefore may be difficult to understand, there is also a German, easy-to-understand summary of each publication on the project website.