A core activity of GBIF is to transform the information stored in natural history collections, biodiversity project files, multimedia objects, etc. into digital data and to make those freely available in the internet. Training in digitisation and data publishing aims to improve all these processes.

Digitising biodiversity data depends heavily on the source of the information. GBIF focuses on providing the tools and guidance for a proper planning of the digitisation activities and in covering a wide spectrum of biodiversity data sources.

Publishing the digitised information using the GBIF Network includes technical and a sociological elements. The technical part has been improved in 2009 by the development of a new tool: the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT). The sociological part gives topics such as access to sensitive data new relevance. Some of the key products of this strategy are:

Biodiversity data is not exempt from the property rights implications of the publication process, such as copyright, citation, acknowledgement, and so on. The GBIF Data Publishing Framework Task Group works on those issues and this training strategy will be built on their recommendations.