News
Experts offer recommendations for improving GBIF-mediated data for agrobiodiversity research
Published 3/4/2016
Experts have completed a report providing more than 50 recommendations for enhancing the coverage, completeness and usefulness of GBIF-mobilized data for research in agrobiodiversity.
Tomato diversity by IBVderBLE, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0
A team of international experts have completed a report providing more than 50 recommendations for enhancing the coverage, completeness and usefulness of GBIF-mobilized data for research in agrobiodiversity.
GBIF’s task group on data fitness for use in agrobiodiversity assembled its recommendations following a survey, in-depth interviews of other experts and a public consultation. The final report is now available on GBIF.org.
"The conservation of agricultural biodiversity cuts across the disciplines of natural resources management, ecology and agriculture, so research requires open access to quality data from various domains," said Elizabeth Arnaud, scientist at Bioversity International and chair of the task group. "The task group’s recommendations provide a concrete road map for improving accessibility and quality while enhancing the usefulness of GBIF-mediated data . We hope they will help the scientific community fill data gaps and remove remaining obstacles to access.”
The report’s recommendations cover all stages of the data flow from publishing to data use. One section offers examples of real uses of data in agrobiodiversity research.
“We expect to discuss the recommendations in an upcoming symposium in São Paulo on biodiversity data quality,” noted Dmitry Schigel, GBIF’s Programme Officer for Content Analysis and Use “At the GBIF Secretariat, our first step will be to prioritize recommendations for action.”