An appraisal of megascience platforms for biodiversity information

Dagmar Triebel,Gerhard Rambold,Gregor Hagedorn

doi:10.3897/mycokeys.5.4302

Dagmar Triebel, Gerhard Rambold + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.5.4302

Copy DOI

Journal: MycoKeys	Publication Date: Dec 28, 2012
Citations: 21	License type: CC BY 3.0

Affiliation: University of Bayreuth

Abstract

The megascience platforms Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Catalogue of Life (CoL), Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), International Barcode of Life (iBOL), International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) and JSTOR Plant Science, all belong to a group of global players that harvest, process, repurpose and provide biodiversity data on all kinds of organisms. Each of these platforms primarily focus on one data domain, for instance, taxonomy and classification, occurrence, morphology, ecology, and molecular data.The present contribution describes aspects of processing and provision of biological research data on these platforms, focusing on the technical implementation of data exchange, copyright issues, and data sharing policies as well as their implications for data custodians, owners, providers, and publishers. With the exception of JSTOR Plant Science, most international initiatives seek long-term business models and funding mechanisms to provide online data openly and free of charge. For example, currently GBIF depends on governmental commitments for its funding, and CoL is financed by EU or national grants, as well as being based on Species 2000, a British non-for-profit company, and ITIS. These business models are compared with that of JSTOR Plant Science, the commercial portal of the Global Plant Initiative (GPI). All initiatives currently meet challenges of sustainability with regard to data curation as well as software development for maintaining the complexity of their services. All platforms discussed here also harvest and provide mycological and lichenological research data.

Highlights

In biodiversity research, data driven approaches, relying on internet resources that provide huge amounts of quality information, are increasingly important
The present contribution will analyse the latter approach and the probable challenges these will have to face in the future. It will focus on seven large platforms for biodiversity, which are relevant for lichen research data at a global scale
Data harvesters like Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Catalogue of Life (CoL), which are typically fed by research data from individual scientists and institutions, may alternatively be supplied by primary data collecting infrastructures, e.g. by the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS; http://www.marinespecies.org/)

Summary

Introduction

Data driven approaches, relying on internet resources that provide huge amounts of quality information, are increasingly important. In the same year when iBOL was launched, 2007, another highly ambitious megascience initiative was launched: The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL; http://eol.org/discover), which collects and freely provides information about all species at a global scale including classifications, multimedia data, maps of occurrences.

Results

Conclusion