GBIF has announced that it will collaborate with the new open access Nature journal Scientific Data on the implementation of the data paper concept - including data descriptors that will allow better data discovery and citation.
GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) has issued Best practice guide for compiling, maintaining, disseminating national species checklists - including the use of herbaria and museum collections.
The 2011 GBIF report is published, with an overview of progress over the past decade. One area where progress has been less than hoped is digitisaion of the larger collections, although the various innovative approaches are noted.
GBIF has announced progress towards integrating biodiversity and genomic data as a result of modifications to the Darwin Core, the data standard for biodiversity. A number of pilots have been announced. Further details on the GBIF press release, with links out to collaborating initiatives, and on a GBIF community site for the Genomic Biodiversity Data Group.
GBIF has produced a new data publishing framework (DR from NHM an author) - released with other papers of interest on biodiversity data in an issue of BMC Informatics - open access. Covers wide range of angles such as open access, data models and networks, but extending to more tricky issues such as credit and attribution for scientists producing data, and mention of future strategy.
New guidance out from GBIF on Preserving Biodiversity Knowledge From Impact Assessment - including biodiversity in EIAs, and using the data legacy.
News release from UC Berkeley on the new Vertnet - intended to integrate existing unsupported vertebrate database initiatives (HerpNet, MaNIS, ORNIS and FishNET) and address difficulties with scaling and sustainability in part through cloud computing. Primarily US collections, but some other large non-US instiitutions have some collections involved. Will integrate with other initiatives such as EoL and GBIF as well to deliver information.
The PLoS Biodversity hub has been around for almost a year now, bringing together open access publications. A new paper from Mindell et al. on PLoS is essential reading on the potential for integration of many biodiversity resources with open access research. Not least, a good list of intiatives, which reads:..../ more
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aggregated specimen data:
interoperability among datasets and databases:
taxonomic literature:
taxonomic names:
molecular sequence data:
images:
phylogenetic relationships:
natural history:
conservation status of species:
and ecological and evolutionary datasetsv http://datadryad.org/
