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      Towards a catalogue of biodiversity databases: An ontological case study

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          Abstract

          Biodiversity informatics depends on digital access to credible information about species. Many online resources host species’ data, but the lack of categorisation for these resources inhibits the growth of this entire field. To explore possible solutions, we examined the (now retired) Biodiversity Information Projects of the World (BIPW) dataset created by the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG); this project, which ran from 2007-2015 (officially removed from the TDWG website in 2018) was an attempt at organising the Web's biodiversity databases into an indexed list. To do this, we applied a simple classification scheme to score databases within BIPW based on nine data categories, to characterise trends and current compositions of this biodiversity e-infrastructure. Primarily, we found that of 600 databases investigated from BIPW, only 315 (~53%) were accessible at the time of this writing, underscoring the precarious nature of the biodiversity information landscape. Many of these databases are still available, but suffer accessibility issues such as link rot, thus putting the information they contain in danger of being lost. We propose that a community-driven database of biodiversity databases with an accompanying ontology could facilitate efficient discovery of relevant biodiversity databases and support smaller databases – which have the greatest risk of being lost.

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          Big data and the future of ecology

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            A decadal view of biodiversity informatics: challenges and priorities

            Biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community's efforts to address scientific conservation and sustainability issues. Great strides have been made in the past decade establishing a framework for sharing data, where taxonomy and systematics has been perceived as the most prominent discipline involved. To some extent this is inevitable, given the use of species names as the pivot around which information is organised. To address the urgent questions around conservation, land-use, environmental change, sustainability, food security and ecosystem services that are facing Governments worldwide, we need to understand how the ecosystem works. So, we need a systems approach to understanding biodiversity that moves significantly beyond taxonomy and species observations. Such an approach needs to look at the whole system to address species interactions, both with their environment and with other species. It is clear that some barriers to progress are sociological, basically persuading people to use the technological solutions that are already available. This is best addressed by developing more effective systems that deliver immediate benefit to the user, hiding the majority of the technology behind simple user interfaces. An infrastructure should be a space in which activities take place and, as such, should be effectively invisible. This community consultation paper positions the role of biodiversity informatics, for the next decade, presenting the actions needed to link the various biodiversity infrastructures invisibly and to facilitate understanding that can support both business and policy-makers. The community considers the goal in biodiversity informatics to be full integration of the biodiversity research community, including citizens’ science, through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike.
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              Maximizing the Value of Ecological Data with Structured Metadata: An Introduction to Ecological Metadata Language (EML) and Principles for Metadata Creation

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Biodivers Data J
                Biodivers Data J
                1
                urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:F9B2E808-C883-5F47-B276-6D62129E4FF4
                urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:245B00E9-BFE5-4B4F-B76E-15C30BA74C02
                Biodiversity Data Journal
                Pensoft Publishers
                1314-2836
                1314-2828
                2020
                27 March 2020
                : 8
                : e32765
                Affiliations
                [1 ] University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada University of Guelph Guelph Canada
                [2 ] University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States of America University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA United States of America
                Author notes
                Corresponding author: Jarrett Blair ( blair@ 123456zoology.ubc.ca ).

                Academic editor: Christos Arvanitidis

                Article
                32765 10566
                10.3897/BDJ.8.e32765
                7125240
                32269475
                c5835694-d556-4739-90bc-248abbbd3506
                Jarrett Blair, Rodger Gwiazdowski, Andrew Borrelli, Michelle Hotchkiss, Candace Park, Gleannan Perrett, Robert Hanner

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 06 January 2019
                : 23 June 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 1, References: 19
                Categories
                Commentary

                ontology,database,databases,database of databases,metadata,biodiversity,indexing,information resource discover

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