RECOMMENDATION ON OPEN ACCESS TO BIODIVERSITY DATA
Explanatory Commentary for Governing Board Delegates:
1. The purpose of the Recommendations and Rationale document is so that GBIF
delegates can bring it to the attention of research councils and other funding agencies
when making arguments for open access to research data.
2. The current GBIF Memorandum of Understanding states in paragraph 3 (Objectives),
article 3 (Involvement of the Participants) that each Participant should seek to (b)
promote the sharing of biodiversity data in GBIF under a common set of standards.
The recommendation above contributes to implementing this article and is meant to
provide assistance to Participants who are building data sharing into research funding
processes.
3. The recommendation suggests that the data and associated metadata should made
publicly available within a specified period after completion of the supported
research. Although a general rule about the time period is unlikely to be feasible
everywhere, an average of two years is reasonable.
4. The most effective way to share species and specimen data is by making them
accessible on-line via the flexible structure of portals that are based on GBIF
standards and technologies (wwdev.gbif.org).
5. The digitization, maintenance and sharing of biodiversity data on the Internet is
daunting to some research groups. However, GBIF has developed expertise and tools
for data sharing which enable researchers to easily share their data through GBIF.
Also, services can be provided to researchers by organizations linked to GBIF. The
nodes of GBIF have developed a range of examples of how this can work in practice
in different situations and for different types of data. These nodes can provide
guidance and assistance where necessary. The list of GBIF nodes managers is
available at http://wwdev.gbif.org/participation/participant-nodes/participant-nodes-committee-members/.
6. The GBIF Secretariat will also bring this suggested policy to the attention of
scientific publishers and professional societies with the recommendation to encourage
authors to make publicly available species and specimen level research data that
support their publications and programs within a specified period after publication.