Plazi, a Bern-based non-profit organization that supports and promotes linked open-access biodiversity data from digital taxonomic literature, has formally joined the GBIF network as a non-country Participant.
Building on the strength of partnership that has already seen Plazi publish more than 1,100 datasets, this step enables them to endorse publishers that wish to share their data through GBIF.org.
Plazi maintains the Taxon Search Portal, a searchable digital taxonomic literature repository. In March 2014, the organization helped create a new workflow that provides immediate and open access to data underlying discovery of new species and shares it through EOL, Biodiversity Data Journal and GBIF.org. Publishers like Plazi and Pensoft are leading the conversion of traditionally published articles into digital formats that connect peer-reviewed research with the data that make it possible, simultaneously preserving and disseminating it more widely.
“By formally joining GBIF, Plazi advances the shared efforts of both organizations to provide critically needed access to vast stores of data and knowledge about species found in biodiversity literature,” said Donat Agosti, president of Plazi. “We are hastening a new kind of journal publishing that builds bridges between traditional scientific literature and the kind of records often mobilized by the GBIF network.”
Plazi becomes the 39th non-country Participant and the 94th member overall in the GBIF network.