Support for projects to promote biodiversity 'data papers'

The GBIF Secretariat has announced support for three co-ordinated projects aimed at promoting publication of peer-reviewed biodiversity ‘data papers’ in Spain, Latin America and Asia.

The GBIF Secretariat has announced support for three co-ordinated projects aimed at promoting publication of peer-reviewed biodiversity ‘data papers’ in Spain, Latin America and Asia.

The successful proposals are a response to a call issued last year, to stimulate activities among GBIF nodes promoting the culture of authoring detailed dataset descriptions (metadata), and publishing them in academic journals.

The purpose is to provide recognition and therefore incentives for researchers who make their data accessible to science, as well as improving the quality and usability of the data themselves.

In one project, GBIF Spain will hold a workshop on data paper publication in March involving more than 20 existing and potential dataset publishers in Spain. It is hoped that each of the participants will be able to publish a data paper as a result of the workshop.

Online guidelines will also be developed in a self-teaching package to help wider efforts to promote data paper publishing in Spanish-speaking countries.

GBIF Spain will collaborate closely with colleagues at Colombia’s Humboldt Institute, host of the GBIF national node, which will co-author the self-teaching package.

In addition, the Humboldt Institute’s journal, Biota Colombiana, will introduce a special section for the publication of data papers according to the GBIF model. This will make it the first journal in Latin America to publish biodiversity data papers.

The final project has been developed by the Wildlife Institute of India, host of the Indian national node, which will also hold a workshop to stimulate publication of data papers, using training material developed by Spain and Colombia. This is intended to result in the submission of at least 20 data papers manuscripts, and publication of new datasets to the GBIF network, from south and southeast Asia.

Each of the three projects will receive catalytic support of €5000 from GBIF’s core funds.

Note: The workflow for generating data paper manuscripts using the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) was developed jointly by GBIF Secretariat and Pensoft Publishing, and guidelines can be downloaded here.

For more information please contact:

GBIF Secretariat

GBIF Secretariat

info@gbif.org

Francisco Pando

GBIF Spain

pando@gbif.es

María Fernanda Gómez

GBIF Colombia

mgomez@humboldt.org.co

Gautam Talukdar

GBIF India

gautam@wii.gov.in