GBIF’s network depends on access to authoritative nomenclatural and taxonomic information. The ECAT Work Programme is focused on providing the framework to support the publication of these resources and to publicise tools and services offered by participating initiatives.
Data published using Global Names Architecture standards provide critical syntactic and semantic information about organism names, including:
- Synonymy – nomenclatural and taxonomic synonyms that can be used to add extra terms to a keyword search
- Homonyms – and the means to identify and distinguish them so that a search for a single taxon does not include records for identically spelled but different taxa
- Classifications – hierarchical lists of taxa that provide an organisational framework for their associated data. This framework can be applied to search and browse interfaces within web sites, search engines and other web interfaces.
- Syntax – the correct spelling for scientific names and the correct scientific names used for species, provided by authoritative sources.
These semantic and syntactic data have broad applications within a range of informatics activities. Among them are:
- Name recognition and discovery tools and services – Authoritative nomenclatural information provides the core components of taxonomic dictionaries (both whitelists and blacklists). Name dictionaries inform name recognition tools, provide the basis for type-ahead services and can support validation services in, for example, specimen cataloguing systems. GBIF is involved in a range of activities related to taxonomic name processing (source code, libraries and documentation are available).
- Name reconciliation services – Any website or search engine that curates content tied to scientific names faces the challenge of matching a name entered in a search to a name tied to content. Checklist Bank and other taxonomic indices provide access to data and services that can reconcile typographic, nomenclatural and taxonomic synonymy to ensure that search results better match a taxon and not just a single name.
