Five francophone GBIF nodes complete first translation of guide on sharing DNA-derived occurrence data

Members of the volunteer translator community from five francophone GBIF nodes have completed the first translatation of the guide, Publishing DNA-derived data through biodiversity data platforms, into French—Publier des données dérivées de l’ADN sur les plateformes de données sur la biodiversité.

Contributing to the effort to make this documentation available to the French-speaking community, Sofia Wyler from GBIF Switzerland, commented on the guide:

"DNA-derived data is a rather specific type of data and the concepts behind its publication in GBIF can be confusing and discouraging. By providing a French version of the guidelines, we hope to help make the process of publishing this type of data more accessible to French speakers, whether they are node managers or potential data providers. During the translation we detected some difficulties on the part of colleagues who were not familiar with DNA-derived data, and we hope that our effort will benefit the wider community. The aim is that more quality DNA-derived data can be made available on GBIF to improve our knowledge of biodiversity and the usefulness of data other than the typical data processed by the platform."

The cross-border team of translators and reviewers consisted of:

• Sofia Wyler, GBIF Switzerland 🇨🇭
• Paul Braun, GBIF Luxembourg 🇱🇺
• Carole Sinou, Canadensys 🇨🇦
• André Heughebaert, GBIF Belgium 🇧🇪
• Anne-Sophie Archambeau, GBIF France 🇫🇷
• Pascal Tschudin, GBIF Switzerland 🇨🇭
• Tania Walisch, GBIF Luxembourg 🇱🇺

Released last year, this digital documenation aims to provide holders of genomic and metagenomic information with practical considerations for resurfacing DNA-derived occurrences in biodiversity data platforms like GBIF.org.

The guide represents the next stage in GBIF's efforts to connect its data infrastructure and tools with relevant sources of genomic and metagenomic information, building on collaborations with the UNITE Community, EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (through both its European Nucleotide Archive and MGnify platform), and the International Barcode of Life Consortium (IBOL).

Open call for volunteer translators! If you'd like to see these or other GBIF guidance documents in your language, please feel free to email us at communication@gbif.org for information about joining our volunteer translator community.