This pages details the main updates to the GBIF.org and related infrastructure. Further details are found in the GitHub repositories, including GBIF.org, occurrence web and download services, occurrence processing pipelines, checklistbank, registry, registry web portal and the Catalogue of Life checklistbank.
23 February 2021
- Support for registering dataset endpoints in Catalogue of Life Data Package format
- Flagging of potential duplicates added to assist editors in deduplication entries in the GRSciColl catalogue. E.g. Reuse of the code PCU
- Ability to restrict permissions for GRSciColl editors to institution or collection, allowing more people to participate
- Schema.org metadata tags revised on the dataset and taxon pages to improve search engine discoverability
11 February 2021
- Quarterly trends now include summaries by GBIF Region (e.g., Latin America and the Caribbean)
26 January 2021
- Improvements to the handling of networks (groupings of datasets) including
- Listing in search e.g. searching for Arctos
- Listing the publishers, and the datasets in the summary e.g. OBIS network
- Ability to control if they are visible on a dataset page
- Ability to assign editorial control to trusted users in the registry
- Support for DOIs for adhoc data exports by GBIFS staff (example https://doi.org/10.15468/dd.jskxae)
- This service is a precursor for GBIF to offer public datasets on cloud environment
- Bug fix for BioCASe protocol metadata synchronisation
- Added the literature vocabularies type, topic and relevance to the API to support analyses by external data scientists
- Added an experimental API categorisation of the griddedness of datasets (e.g. this example)
- Based on exploratory work documented in this blog post
- Added capability to associate ROR and GRID ids to organisations in the GBIF registry
2020
17 December 2020
- Search capability to find records that participate in a cluster, e.g. 9M specimen-related occurrences that cluster
- Search for records that have content in any Darwin Core Archive extension. For example, records with the OBIS Extended Measurements and Facts
- A dashboard (metrics) is added to the institution (e.g. Kew Gardens) and collection (e.g. SAIAB Algae) pages summarizing the digitized occurrence records. Note that records may come from multiple datasets
- Improvements to date interpretation, including the ability to disambiguate date formats (dd/mm/yyyy vs MM/dd/yyyy) using the GBIF Registry and machine tags
15 December 2020
- Search for occurrence records by hosting organization e.g. map of records hosted by GBIF France or through the API
- Search for records by life stage added, such as images of records in nymph stage. Interpretation of this content is backed by the vocabulary server that is part of the registry. GBIF intend to open up vocabularies for collaborative editing when ready, and are working with the TDWG Data Quality Group on this topic.
14 December 2020
- API deployed to support Literature search by DOI. This API is documented in GitHub but documentation will be moved to the GBIF API documentation shortly
8 December 2020
- The new Catalogue of Life website is live. This is the first deployment that is powered by GBIF and hosted on GBIF infrastructure. In addition to the public website are the common repository known as the checklistbank, and a new API which is supported in the rOpenSci client.
2 December 2020
- Extension data now shown on all occurrence pages e.g. measurements example
- Specimen-related occurrence records now link to the collection catalogue entries in addition to the dataset they originate from e.g. this record from SAIAB. Matching uses a variety of fields including
collectionCode,institutionCode,collectionIDandinstitutionID. See the FAQ on how to improve matching - New API to improve searching against the Collection Catalogue, e.g searching for "K"
- Elasticsearch updated to version 7.10.0
9 November 2020
- iDigBio collection catalogue imported to the GBIF Registry. This is visible on the GRSciColl pages; the API now powers the iDigBio Collections Catalogue portal. Data management is now shared across teams.