The simplest and most efficient way to share data on organism occurrence is to create a Darwin Core Archive for an entire dataset, which can be done with GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit.
Below is a list of existing data standards that are still supported by – and in use within – the GBIF network to document simple organism occurrence data. Participants of GBIF have supported the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) group and been involved in the definition of these standards.
The recommended protocols for accessing data are:
- TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval (TAPIR)
- Biological Collections Access Services (BioCASe) protocol
- The legacy Distributed Generic Information Retrieval (DiGIR) is supported by GBIF but not recommended for new installations
Currently, the GBIF data portal requires all occurrence records to have an Institution Code, Collection Code, Catalogue Number and some Identification such as a Scientific Name in order to be indexed. GBIF is involved in the scoping of Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) for use with within the network, and these requirements may change when GUIDs become widely adopted.
