GBIF Work Programme 2021 Annual Update to Implementation Plan 2017–2022

Launch a new 2021 call for proposals under the Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (€80,000)

Support further development of the Living Atlases community (€30,000)

Support for 2021 Regional Nodes Meetings (€32,000). The Secretariat will investigate possible synergies with BID phase 2 regional meetings, if funding is forthcoming, as well as with a BIFA workshop in Asia. An additional €28,000 has already been transferred from the 2020 budget towards hosting of the Africa regional nodes meeting.

Develop communications to support the GBIF value proposition (€10,000)

Maintain and update processes for constructing the GBIF taxonomic backbone. €108,000 has been allocated in the budget to support GBIF contractor costs

Supplementary funds: Implement a sixth call for proposals (approximately €110,000) under the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA), reflecting priorities agreed by Asian nodes and subject to decision by the BIFA Steering Committee.

Governance funds: Launch 2020 calls for the Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and Young Researchers Awards (€25,000), considering recommendations from the Science Committee based on the 2020 programmes. The Science Committee is exploring potential external funds for these awards.

Further personalize ORCID use on GBIF.org through user profiles and citation tracking; communicate the benefits to users

In consultation with node managers, Heads of Delegation and committee members, prepare a draft visibility strategy for organizing and coordinating GBIF champions among scientific, policy- and decision-making, and funder communities. Responds to recommendation 3 of the GBIF 20-year review

Based on the 2020 Letter of Agreement between GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), work to align OBIS and GBIF technical guidance and training materials, explore options for joint training workshops

Further develop digital documentation to support community needs (author contracts dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Develop e-Learning strategy to support training needs across multiple curricula, including both self-instruction and GBIF-led courses (consultancy contract dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Continue in-kind support for external projects making use of GBIF-developed training modules

In conjunction with the community, develop an online data cleaning course, to support guidance on expected data quality services to be offered by GBIF Participant nodes

Expand engagement of volunteer mentors, including through webinars and a mechanism for tracking contributions of mentors

Develop guidance materials in multiple languages to support project writing for GBIF-led programmes

Support regional nodes meetings deferred from 2020 due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. This may involve co-location with 2021 regional capacity enhancement workshops under the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) and Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA) programmes (€32,000, in addition to €28,000 towards Africa regional meeting reserved in 2020 budget)

Based on the 2020 Letter of Agreement between GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), establish and improve links between GBIF and OBIS nodes in all regions

Continue to enhance guidance resources for nodes, including advice on the role of nodes to maintain data quality (see also Activity 1b), on their engagement with citizen science and the private sector (see also Activity 3c), and on best practices for engaging with indigenous peoples and local communities including community-based monitoring

Implement 'child branding' establishing recognized logos exclusive to active GBIF Participant nodes, in conjunction with marks for GBIF data publishers, and projects making use of GBIF through 'powered by GBIF' branding (consultancy contract dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Pilot hosted portals at regional, national and institutional level. Responds to recommendations 6 and 10b of the GBIF 20-year review

In consultation with the Participants, explore possible pricing structure for additional services provided by GBIF Secretariat, e.g. hosted portals and national IPT installations, training services, etc, based on country membership status (i.e. Voting Participant, Associate Participant, non-Participant/Observer), while maintaining the core principle that data access will remain free and open to all

In consultation with Participants, explore possible models for establishment, functions, staffing, governance and funding of GBIF regional offices. Responds to recommendations 6 and 18 of the GBIF 20-year review

Continue offering financial support for the Living Atlases community, currently used to fund project administrators through decision of the Living Atlases Management Committee (€30,000)

Publish a biannual newsletter to data publishers, keeping them informed of significant developments and meeting the conditions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Improve reporting of data use to data publishers, implement clearer display of use information on pages for publishers and download DOIs

Explore services for publishers to opt in to receive push notifications for new citations

Enhance regional helpdesk services

Continue the development of reference vocabularies used in data processing; mature the community of editors, discuss and coordinate governance, priorities and workflows

Actively seek new Voting Participant countries, and the return of former Voting Participants, to broaden the funding base ahead of the 2023-2027 financial period; in particular highlighting to governments the value of GBIF in meeting data and capacity needs for national implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

Initiate call for regional outreach project proposals to support expansion of national participation, as well as improved connections with relevant regional organizations and networks (support from core funds dependent on 2021 budget evaluation). Responds to recommendations 5 and 6 of the GBIF 20-year review

Explore additional funded capacity programmes, within the broad umbrella of the BID programme, focussed on underrepresented regions in GBIF. Responds to recommendation 5 of the GBIF 20-year review

Maintain and expand internationalization of GBIF.org, especially translation of key page content and digital documentation, minimally for the six official UN languages and further languages based on demand and volunteer translator capacity

Develop a 'catalogue of GBIF services' to support implementation of the resource mobilization strategy (see Activity 1g). This will include completion and curation of the capacity portfolio developed in 2020, with additional components of services offered by GBIF to include in outreach materials for potential funders and implementation partners

Develop communications to support the GBIF value proposition (€10,000). Responds to recommendations 4a and 7 of the GBIF 20-year review

Organize the 3rd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC3), hosted by the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), to address the ongoing operation and governance of the alliance for biodiversity knowledge

Organize and run the 2nd Synthesys+ workshop relating to citation of collections

Plan for the 3rd Synthesys+ workshop relating to Digital Specimen data models

Select projects in the sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean and Pacific calls of the extended BID programme, negotiate contracts and coordinate start of 2-year project implementation cycle

Run BID capacity enhancement workshops in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific to support project implementation in the extended phase of the programme, exploring co-location for GBIF regional nodes meetings during 2021 (see Activity 1c)

Launch the 2021 call for proposals under the Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP) (€80,000). Responds to recommendation 6 of the GBIF 20-year review

Launch the sixth call for proposals under the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA) programme, supported by supplementary funding from the Japanese Ministry of Environment, and including a 2021 data mobilization training workshop which may be co-located with the 2021 GBIF Asia regional nodes meeting (subject to agreement by the BIFA Steering Committee). Responds to recommendation 5 of the GBIF 20-year review

Subject to consultation with Participants and nodes, including discussion at GB27, complete, publish and begin implementation of the GBIF resource mobilization strategy aimed at broadening the supplementary funding base. Responds to recommendation 10b of the GBIF 20-year review

Participate in the ongoing Open Digital Specimen and Extended Specimen Network standards development and strive towards a common solution

Run an open consultation to review the state and direction of specimen-related identifiers across GBIF and document the expectations of, and opportunities offered by the GBIF infrastructure

Support the work of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and the Living Atlas community, in adoption of the GBIF registry; this will likely require mapping between dataset metadata and alignment of APIs

Explore existing and potential standards to better accommodate exchange of ecological data; promote collaborations between nodes who have identified a need for this (see also activity 3b)

Enhance the occurrence records clustering algorithm to improve record linkages, including better understanding of collecting expeditions and collector names

Explore standards and interfaces to allow brokering of data clustering annotations to data publishers; broaden the capabilities to include external annotations

Review the GBIF Metadata Profile to explore the feasibility and benefits of migrating to the latest version of Ecological Metadata Language (EML)

Review the Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) exchange model; explore potential for DwC-A datasets to comply simultaneously with Frictionless Data and EML data packages, to facilitate ecological dataset exchange and reuse

Revise the GBIF Data Validator to be consistent with data ingestion, and to follow best practices

Revise the GBIF quarterly data analytics, to follow recent changes in data processing, such as handling counts of absence-based records

Pilot phylogenetic browsing of occurrence data

Complete outstanding tasks to integrate the extended Catalogue of Life in GBIF

Focus activities on:

Prioritize improvements to the Prokaryote taxonomy sector in collaboration with the Genome Taxonomy Database and/or the Silva group

Maintain and update processes for constructing the GBIF taxonomic backbone, including monitoring the content and helping to prioritize editorial effort (continued from 2020)(€108,000)

Implement a process enabling key checklists to be used in filtering occurrence data, such as Red Listed species and invasive alien species (carried over from 2020)

Explore feasibility of supporting national taxonomies for exploring GBIF occurrence data to better enable national level reporting (carried over from 2020)

Complete outstanding tasks to deploy an enriched catalogue providing search and access of collections, specimens and people

Continue data management activities for the collections catalogue, integrating data from differing sources; in particular:

Establish a global editorial team formed by key stakeholders and authorities (including Index Herbariorum, iDigBio, ALA, NCBI Biocollections, DiSSCo, CETAF and GGBN) to agree on future data curation workflows, responsibilities, mandate and issue resolution mechanisms, and to guide development requirements

Explore synchronization of content with the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) Registry (under development)

Pilot a profile of the TDWG Collection Descriptions to capture collection-level metadata; include taxa, geography, time and quantity dimensions as a minimum

Develop guidance on use of tools and approaches for targeted data mobilization to address priority data gaps

Scope and establish thematic data mobilization campaigns on zoonotic diseases, private sector data and sequenced-derived data, with calls supported by supplementary funding (see activities 1c, 3c, 5b)

Continue linking and integration of sequence-derived data in GBIF.org. Responds to recommendation 9 of the GBIF 20-year review

Collaborate with long-term monitoring communities to generate more sampling-event datasets in GBIF.org, and to help fill current data gaps. This work will guide development of enhanced standards for ecological data (see activity 2a).

Launch data mobilization campaign for the private sector, building on guidance resources developed in 2020 (see Activities 1c and 3b)

Continue to implement workflow for prioritizing and drawing upon potential data sources reported through the ‘suggest a dataset’ tool, including involvement of nodes, mentors and crowdsourced solutions (carried over from 2020)

Roll out a workflow for processing data mobilization requests arising from the ‘suggest a dataset’ tool

Explore strengthening of data paper model as a means of promoting data mobilization and quality control, through clear workflow, associated training and guidance, continue experiment of sponsored Article Processing Charges (APCs). May be integrated as a component of existing and future capacity enhancement and data mobilization programmes (see activity 1g)

Continue engagement with academic journal publishers to improve data citation and data publication practice; explore interest in publisher-administered, hosted IPT solutions for primary data uploads related to journal articles

Following open discussion on the Community Forum, explore preserving periodic copies of GBIF-mediated data on open public and research cloud infrastructures to both ensure persistence and promote wider and easier use of GBIF; develop recommendations and tools to support best-practice citation of GBIF-mediated data accessed through external cloud environments

Supply clear indicator measures for the completeness and usability of data as part of GBIF.org dataset pages, based on examples such as the GEOLabel data branding model: explore DiSSCo’s MIDS standard (minimum information for digital specimen) (carried over from 2020)

Ensure that users of data are able to identify datasets or records that do not fulfil their criteria for geo-accuracy, whether they are accessing data through facets in the GBIF.org, via the API or in downloads (carried over from 2020)

Continue the work started in 2020 to identify and mark records suspected to be geographic outliers, and report to data users and publishers in suitable formats

Extend the documentation, prioritization and presentation of data issues identified during data processing, with particular focus on actionable items for data publishers and alerts to data users

Continue to explore the use of the GBIF data index to support stable persistent resolvable identifiers for all specimens and occurrence records (see Activity 2a)

Continue working with global community via the alliance for biodiversity knowledge to explore bidirectional data linking and synchronization with data management systems and publishers, to achieve faster and more accurate mutual updates on data improvements and annotations (see Activity 2a)

In collaboration with nodes, develop re-usable materials for supporting use of GBIF-mediated data, as well as best practices on data citation and publication of research data, in academic curricula, especially graduate programmes

Equip Biodiversity Open Data Ambassadors with updated resources, scale up thematic and geographic coverage

Engage with academic-based projects that could use GBIF-mediated data better in their pipelines and protocols, through collaborative external funding opportunities

Engage with professional societies to advance knowldge of GBIF functionalities in these user communities

Coordinate work of the expert group on mobilization and use of data on zoonotic diseases (funding of face to face meetings dependent on 2021 budget evaluation). Responds to recommendation 10a of the GBIF 20-year review

Publish outcomes of the analysis of primary data needs for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, promote at relevant fora including the COP15 meeting of the CBD in Kunming, China

Showcase tools and practices for use of GBIF in Red Listing and other species assessment processes including Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), as well as in science-policy processes such as national ecosystem assessments

Launch Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and Young Researchers Awards competitions for 2021 (€25,000)

Explore options for using supplementary funds to support a Grand Challenge competition, targeting data mobilization and analysis to address a high-profile challenge for research and/or policy. Responds to recommendation 4b of the GBIF 20-year review

Further personalize ORCID use on GBIF.org through user profiles and citation tracking; communicate the benefits to users

In consultation with node managers, Heads of Delegation and committee members, prepare a draft visibility strategy for organizing and coordinating GBIF champions among scientific, policy- and decision-making, and funder communities. Responds to recommendation 3 of the GBIF 20-year review

Argentina: We were forced (due to the pandemic) to virtualize all of our activities, which affected the duration, form of implementation and work in some lines of work and projects.

Benin: Capacity building through workshops and in the framework of the master program in biodiversity informatics.

Colombia: Updated the metadata of the publishing organizations to ensure the value of their contributions. Participated in different discussions in the GBIF Community Forum.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Started implementing ORCIDs in ELViS.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has supported and organized workshops, webinars, and symposia related to the use of digitized biodiversity data in research, including an annual Digital Data in Biodiversity Research conference.

Japan: One workshop to expand the GBIF-related biodiversity informatics community held.

Korea, Republic of: Surveys on biodiversity data have been conducted twice, among the biodiversity data network consisting of 59 domestic data providers and other potential participants. Workshop and regular meetings with the 59-member network have been held.

NatureServe: During 2020 NatureServe in collaboration with the GEO BON Secretariat has carried out several activities focused on highlighting the value of GBIF’s work in various Latin American countries. Together with several institutions in the Tropical Andes including the nodes in Peru, Ecuador and the incipient node in Bolivia we have been conducting surveys to better understand the connection between data producers and users. The idea is to give more relevance to the information from biodiversity observations for its use in solving urgent problems of society.

Netherlands: NLBIF has advocated NHC collectors to get ORCIDs and claim their specimens and taxonomic identifications through Bionomia, formerly Bloodhound-tracker. NLBIF has launched a new website where all data mobilization, infrastructure and participation projects that are funded by NLBIF are highlighted, including the people conducting the projects. Furthermore, the website includes a page for citizen scientists directing them to iNaturalist and Waarneming.nl.

Nigeria: Although COVID-19 has altered several physical activities for the current year, we have been in close contact with relevant individuals who have shown the willingness to share their data via our IPT.

Spain: We will spread through our national communication channels the new and expanded user profile at gbif.org when it is ready. We are already promoting the use of ORCID identifiers among our community of data providers.

Sweden: The new National Swedish Biodiversity Data Research Infrastructure (SBDI), officially starting operations 2021-01-01, represents a consortium of 14 partners with a shared secretariat under the lead of a Managing Director, a Project Coordinator and a Systems Architect at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and a Deputy MD plus a Communications Officer at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The MD is also Node Manager of GBIF-Sweden, and the GBIF node is physically located at the museum (technically a part of the consortium). Considerable effort has been spent during 2020 organizing the consortium, quite naturally involving the staff of GBIF-Sweden whose systems developer is also the systems architect of SBDI. All of our efforts within the Swedish GBIF node and SBDI on the whole is expected to benefit GBIF.org and the greater biodiversity informatics community.

Zimbabwe: GBIF Zimbabwe launched its website www.gbifzimbabwe.gq.

Argentina: Once the pandemic is resolved the plan is to resume the pending activities of 2020. All our node performs its tasks in home office mode and it has been impossible to continue with many activities that depend on of the Ministry. Therefore, being able to resume activities normally will be our first priority.

Benin: We will continue progress towards more achievements in capacity building through workshops and in the framework of the masters program in biodiversity informatics, data mobilization and data uses.

Brazil: Assess the possibility of using ORCID in SiBBr / assess possibilities of tracking.

Cameroon: For the year 2021, GBIF Cameroon plans to upgrade its Biodiversity Information System in order to facilitate the use of data in strategic biodiversity management documents in Cameroon. As GBIF funds do not finance this type of activity, the national node plans to use internal resources and that of local partners.

Colombia: Continue updating the metadata of the organizations. Make the publishing organizations visible and disseminate the benefits of using ORCID.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Augmented user profiles based on ORCID in ELViS, to be developed in SYNTHESYS+

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to support and organize workshops, webinars, symposia, and other events aimed at increasing digitization, mobilization, and research use of biodiversity data.

Japan: Provide one workshop to expand the GBIF-related biodiversity informatics community (probably webinar).

Korea, Republic of: Field surveys on biodiversity data will be conducted twice with 61 biodiversity data network. Workshop and regular meeting with the 59 network will be held.

LifeWatch ERIC: Meetings at the executive level will continue and technical teams will meet to find complementarities and commonly shared vision between GBIF and LifeWatch ERIC.

NatureServe: In North America, and specifically in the United States, we have been working with our member organizations of the NatureServe network to include georeferenced data in the information that NatureServe publishes on GBIF. This is an old goal that we are taking up again in our priorities as an organization and we have made some initial steps in the technical aspects in 2020, we anticipate that we will arrive in 2021 with the pleasant surprise that the ~one million records on threatened species that NatureServe publishes on GBIF will have latitude, longitude and degree of uncertainty.

Netherlands: Continued advocacy for ORCID. NLBIF as DiSSCo-NL national node plans to organize a symposium for Dutch DiSSCo partners on DiSSCo developments and the interactions between GBIF and DiSSCo.

Nigeria: In the year 2021, the Nigerian Node hopes to involve more data holders in its activities. Potential collaborators including researchers and other biodiversity data users have been identified and will be contacted soon. We would ensure that data providers also provide us with a registered ORCID Id in an attempt to meet today’s metadata standards.

Poland: We plan to implement ORCID identifiers in databases and use them in a new biodiversity data system of KSIB that is under construction now.

Sweden: Being part of SBDI, GBIF-Sweden will contribute to operate and maintain a website for the joint consortium offering efficient data access, and lots of tools for ingestion, management, analysis and visualization of a multitude of data types. Extensive support facilities are also provided. The underlying technology is based upon the Atlas of living Australia stack but pre-conceived tools of other origin as presented by SBDI consortium partners may also be reached at the site. The SBDI Spatial Portal (the "BioAtlas" - which is the prime tool for extraxting https.//bioatlas.se[species occurrence information] will facilitate users to search and analyse Swedish biodiversity data from numerous environmental and other aspects. Helpdesk and provider/user workshops will be arranged and successively more data types made available.

United States of America: USGS will lead an ESIP cluster on Biological Data Standards to help build a community of practice in the US around standardizing biological data to meet FAIR principles.

Zimbabwe: Maintain the GBIF Zimbabwe official website.

Based on the 2020 Letter of Agreement between GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), work to align OBIS and GBIF technical guidance and training materials, explore options for joint training workshops

Further develop digital documentation to support community needs (author contracts dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Develop e-Learning strategy to support training needs across multiple curricula, including both self-instruction and GBIF-led courses (consultancy contract dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Continue in-kind support for external projects making use of GBIF-developed training modules

In conjunction with the community, develop an online data cleaning course, to support guidance on expected data quality services to be offered by GBIF Participant nodes

Expand engagement of volunteer mentors, including through webinars, and a mechanism for tracking and ensuring visibility of the contributions of mentors and trainers

Develop guidance materials in multiple languages to support project writing for GBIF-led programmes

Argentina: Participated as trainer (national and regional) on virtual channels. Continued with the advice of our publishers, through virtual channels, to facilitate and promote the publication of datasets.

Australia: (updating 2019) Members of the Atlas team helped organise BiodiversityNext and attended the event in Leiden. The Atlas contributed to the Living Atlases symposium and gave presentations on BHL and Australia’s digital research infrastructures for biodiversity informatics.

Belgium: Completed set of explainer texts in multiple languages: French and Dutch translations.

Benin: Capacity building through workshops and in the framework of the master program in biodiversity informatics, data mobilization, data uses.

Brazil: Availability of digital documentation to support Living Atlas community is underway / tutorial videos were produced.

Cameroon: Although having identified several institutions holding data on biodiversity, GBIF Cameroon did not succeed in organizing a training workshop due to lack of resources. GBIF France’s support in this area was hampered by this lack of financial resources and a conflicting agenda.

Colombia: Online workshop to strengthen skills in data managment and data publication. Support the actions to replicate the Data Use For Decision Making workshop for the Iberoamerican community (CESP2019-005), National.

France: GBIF France supplied trainers and mentors for workshops organized by GBIF during 2020 under BID and BIFA for capacity enhancement in data publishing and use.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued its training and workforce development activities, including the maintenance of key partnerships, such as with The Carpentries, to improve computer and data skills. In addition, iDigBio has established a bi-monthly "office hour" aimed at helping participants use R to access digitized biodiversity data via APIs. Over the course of FY20, iDigBio conducted 49 distinct workshops, webinars, symposia, and other events which were attended by nearly 1,900 participants.

Japan: Two workshops for data carpentry done, and use cases collected.

Korea, Republic of: New IT staff has been employed to operating and managing KBIF IPT server. He attended the BIFA workshop to get more knowledge and technical skills to implement his role.

NatureServe: Three highly integrated flagship concepts that NatureServe promotes by developing capacities and skills in Latin America and the Caribbean are the Red List of Species, the Red List of Ecosystems and the Key Biodiversity Areas. These concepts in their different criteria use at their core information on taxonomic observations in space and time. NatureServe has organized webinars (i.e., Pulse of the Planet) in relation to the Red List and the KBAs, and also to more basic elements such as the Darwin Core standard which is used to transfer information on biodiversity observations.

Netherlands: Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam is now hosting their own IPT to mobilize data, including images to GBIF without assistence of NLBIF.

Nigeria: In the year 2020, the Node ensured that data holders are updated on the need to ensure data quality before publication on GBIF platform. Students and Corps Members were actively involved in data mobilization and data cleaning. The workshops organised by the Node in 2019 ensured rapid understanding of the processes as researchers and users of biodiversity data have been equipped with the required techniques for data mobilization and quality control.

Norway: BioDATA data mobilization training events in Armenia (April 2020) and in Ukraine (October 2020) was disrupted by the COVID-19 travel restrictions and have been delayed to 2021. A one-year project extension was approved by the Norwegian funding agency.

Poland: A group (10 persons) of representatives of KSIB partners attended the Training School "Digitisation and data management challenges in small collections” of COST Mobilise Action held in Warsaw on 13-14 Feb 2020. The program and training materials were based on GBIF trainings regarding data management so it can be easily treated as strengthening skills within the local network. Independently, in August, extended training on management of digitized data was launched, involving employees of 18 institutions participating in the dititization project IMBIO (stands for Integration and Mobilization of Biotic Data on Eukaryota in Resources of Polish Scientific Institutions) led by the node manager. While it cannot be treated as a counterpart of GBIF training, being focused on scope and goals of the project, the training improves understanding of basic rules in biodiversity data management (identifiers, data atomization, data types) and provides trainees with skills and tools necessary to work efficiently.

South Africa: Implementation of SANBI-GBIF e-learning work in the SANBI Research Strategy. Discussions are ongoing with service provider on development of training modules.

Spain: We will replicate the Data Use For Decision Making workshop for the Iberoamerican community in coordination with other nodes from the region. We will continue to provide support for GBIF coordinated training through our e-learning platform, as well as for other members of the network (e.g. GBIF South Africa). We will work together with the Secretariat to expand the functionalities of the GBIF.ES e-learning platform. We remain fully committed to the Living Atlases, and support and contribute to its activities and approach.

Sweden: International collaboration is a corner-stone of SBDI (incl. GBIF-Sweden) and its predecessors. All consortium partners have contributed and drawn experience from a great number of bi- and multilateral activities.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: The NBN is Supporting the Living Atlas community:

United States of America: USGS led trainings on using Darwin Core for biological data. Additionally, USGS started a Standardizing Marine Biological Data working group to help the marine community with aligning their data to Darwin Core resulting in eight new datasets being published since a training in October 2019.

Zimbabwe: We conducted two training sessions, one on Data mobilisation and the other on Data Access and Use.

Argentina:Participation as mentor and trainer (national, regional and global), (start to) publish the National Biodiversity Inventory of the Environment Secretariat on the ALA Portal of Argentina . Continue with the advice of our publishers to facilitate and promote the publication of data sets.

Australia: Members of the Atlas team plan to support Living Atlas events in 2021.

Belgium: Help developing an online data cleaning course, to support guidance on expected data quality services.

Benin: We will continue progress towards more acheivements in :Capacity building through workshops and in the framework of the master program in biodiversity informatics Data mobilization, Data uses.

Brazil: Based on the 2020 Letter of Agreement between GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), an alignment will be made from the technical guidance and training materials from OBIS and GBIF.

Cameroon: For 2021, GBIF Cameroon plans to submit once again a capacity building project for members of its network to CESP 2021 (this after two failures in 2019 and 2020). The node is also considering exploring local resources to implement this activity.

Colombia: Continue the capacity enhancement activities and workshops.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Training and capacity enhancement activities will be organised through the COST Action MOBILISE

France: GBIF France will continue support for capacity enhancement activities and workshops.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its training and workforce development activities through workshops, webinars, symposia, and other events.

Japan:Provide two workshop for data carpentry and more usecases to be collected (probably Webinar).

NatureServe: For 2021 we have several activities planned (some that should have happened in 2020 but were delayed by the global health crisis). The Tropical Andes Biodiversity Observatory project supported by GBIF, iNaturalist, and the GEO BON Secretariat has planned a series of workshops to build capacity at the local level in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, funded by the University of Cordoba in Spain. The second activity we have planned for 2021 will be the socialization of technical approaches for NatureServe data that will be released in their spatial dimension with associated uncertainty which will require their socialization for their correct use and application and analysis.

Netherlands: Organize a workshop on data cleaning and the use of the IPT to mobilize data to GBIF. Develop a georeferencing pipeline in collaboration with Naturalis.

Nigeria: In 2021, we look forward to strengthening our capacity involvement through seminars and workshops (virtual and physical environments), were recent techniques will be taught to ensure publication standards are met.

Norway: BioDATA will organize data mobilization training events in Armenia and Ukraine, both delayed from 2020. BioDATA is also contributing to developing a (reusable) training curriculum for the mobilization of molecular DNA data streams in close collaboration with the GBIF Secretariat for a BioDATA training course planned for Georgia (rescheduled from 2020 to 2021). BioDATA also plans for launching a virtual data mobilization training course to be open to all BioDATA partners, including participants from Norway, in early 2021 (or late 2020).

Poland: We continue the struggle for substantial governmental funding for KSIB’s activities, including training and capacity building. The corresponding module will be included in the next proposal for extension of the GBIF cooperation project (currently comprising only the GBIF fee). We aim at implementing a star schema of trainings – a training (or a set of trainings) done by GBIF community in Poland (training trainers) and subsequent local regional trainings in Poland conducted by local trainers trained earlier.

Portugal: Support capacity enhancement through mentoring in training workshops and translation of materials to Portuguese.

South Africa:SANBI-GBIF will continue to conduct training workshops and develop communities of practice in identified biodiversity informatics areas Capacity building for the different communities involved in GBIF is a pilar of our ongoing strategy. Our e-learning platform and the use that GBIF and its communities make of it so proves it. We plan to continue and expand this area of activity and collaboration

Sweden: By participation (membership and practical participation in systems development of the Living Atlases community), by being active partners in numerous thematic organizations and by taking part in training program(-mes) in cooperation with colleagues practicing exchange of ideas and material, and education/teaching in Biodiversity Informatics (first, second, tertiary, Master, Research level) support will be given to existing and prospective new partners in GBIF, in the LA community and elsewhere. Mentoring and participation in LA community workshops are essential components of biodiversity informatics technical development, and support will be given to developers at other GBIF nodes, at universities and at governmental bodies constructing software and web services for biodiversity data harvesting and publication. SBDI/GBIF-Sweden will also assist Swedish data providers, systems developers and users with the means to develop tools and to apply data and functions in the SBDI web. GBIF-Sweden will continue its engagement in the setting-up of a national BI-portal in Tanzania started up in 2020, we have been contacted by GBIF in Nigeria for potential collaboration, and by colleagues in Ethiopia interested in cooperating in data harvest and presentation.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Support for the Living Atlas community will continue.

United States of America: USGS will lead an effort to create best practice documentation focused on using Darwin Core for marine biological data and will publish the best practice in the Ocean Best Practices System. USGS will seek endorsement of this best practice by the Global Ocean Observing System. USGS will also participate in MBON Pole to Pole workshops to train data providers in using Darwin Core for marine data. USGS was also invited to participate in a Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) working group data schema subgroup on Coordinated Global Research Assessment Of Seagrass Systems.

Zimbabwe: We plan to conduct two training workshops: one on R and the second one on Ecological Niche Modelling.

Support regional nodes meetings deferred from 2020 due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. This may involve co-location with 2021 regional capacity enhancement workshops under the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) and Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA) programmes (€32,000, in addition to €28,000 towards Africa regional meeting reserved in 2020 budget)

Based on the 2020 Letter of Agreement between GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), establish and improve links between GBIF and OBIS nodes in all regions

Continue to enhance guidance resources for nodes, including advice on the role of nodes to maintain data quality (see also Activity 1b), on their engagement with citizen science and the private sector (see also Activity 3c), and on best practices for engaging with indigenous peoples and local communities including community-based monitoring

Implement 'child branding' establishing recognized logos exclusive to active GBIF Participant nodes, in conjunction with marks for GBIF data publishers, and projects making use of GBIF through 'powered by GBIF' branding (consultancy contract dependent on 2021 budget evaluation)

Pilot hosted portals at regional, national and institutional level. Responds to recommendations 6 and 10b of the GBIF 20-year review

In consultation with the Participants, explore possible pricing structure for additional services provided by GBIF Secretariat, e.g. hosted portals and national IPT installations, training services, etc, based on country membership status (i.e. Voting Participant, Associate Participant, non-Participant/Observer), while maintaining the core principle that data access will remain free and open to all.

In consultation with the Participants, explore possible models for establishment, functions, staffing, governance and funding of GBIF regional offices. Responds to recommendations 6 and 18 of the GBIF 20-year review

Continue offering financial support for the Living Atlases community, currently used to fund project administrators through decision of the Living Atlases Management Committee (€30,000)

Argentina: Mentor to new nodes. Support and organization of virtual regional nodes meeting. We had to ask other node managers for assistance as the deputy representative was not available during the organization. Situation that still remains in any activity related to regional representation (we should review this type of situation, since all responsibility ends up falling on a representative).

Australia: The Atlas continues to provide support to the Living Atlases community and assisting the work of the Living Atlas coordinators. The Living Atlas coordinators have been involved in the Systems upgrade work that has been a key project for the Atlas in 2020.

Benin: In the framework of our master program, courses are being registered and will be provided to JRS Biodiversity Foundation, our donor. It will be then popularized and disseminated to be available for the general public.

Brazil: Significant developments in 2020 included the launch of the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System Living Atlas platform, including the spatial portal.

Cameroon: In 2020, GBIF Cameroon identified potential suppliers of data on biodiversity. Working sessions were tenuous with some of them finally laying the foundations for future collaboration.

Colombia: i) Supported two countries in the LAC region (Panama & Bolivia) to consolidate their participation in the GBIF network. ii) Supported the translation activities of GBIF content into Spanish.

France: Based on the Living Atlas portals, we contributed to the French national portal "openobs" and helped Togo and Benin to set up and sustain their portals.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio attended the GBIF network webinars and found them valuable. Although, we encourage the Secretariat to establish a regular schedule for the webinars. iDigBio is leading the Collections Data Infrastructure Working Group (CDIWG) aimed at developing partnerships, collaborations, and a community of practice among the major global aggregators.

Japan: Continuous improvement of S-Net system (domestic website for searching natural history specimens).

Korea, Republic of: Constantly working on updating the data to increase usability in use in research, exhibition, and education.

NatureServe: NatureServe participated not only in the North American regional meetings but also in the meetings of the Latin American and Caribbean Nodes as guest participant in 2020.

Netherlands: NLBIF is leading the "ECA Working Group - GBIF nodes and Research Infrastructures" to draft a document that describes different national models on how GBIF nodes can collaborate and align efforts/activities with European biodiversity RIs (DiSSCo, ELIXIR, LifeWatch, eLTER,…​), EOSC and EGI. NLBIF supported the ALA officer. NLBIF explores (through Naturalis) the implementation of hosted portals at institutional and national levels together with GBIF.

Nigeria: The node attended the regional virtual meeting held this year.

Norway: As part of the BioDATA project, GBIF Norway will provide node mentoring services to partner countries who make progress towards joining GBIF as new members (see also Activity 1e).

Poland: The Polish Participant Node cooperated with Belarussian Node to prepare CESP proposal and the initiative turned out to be successful.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF has continued work and engagements on the GBIF-Africa Business Case, and regional engagement strategy. The Node has developed an information product to support messaging and promotion of the African Coordinating Mechanism, which was discussed at the GBIF-Africa Regional Meeting. SANBI-GBIF will highlight the role of GBIF and engage the scientific community at the annual Biodiversity Information Management and Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme Forum, on the Biodiversity Open Ambassador programme.

Spain: We will keep on supporting the Living Atlases community: support coordinators to find a model of governance for the community; assist other data managers of the different Atlases around the world. We will work to develop online exercises on different modules of the Atlas to continue improving LA documentation for users.

Sweden: Continued development and addition of ALA tools will be shared through the new Swedish "Bioatlas" and by sharing code at GitHub. Support to other nodes employing techniques where we may be of help will continue/increase.

United States of America: USGS has worked to include OBIS nodes (OBIS Canada, Ocean Tracking Network) in GBIF meetings like the North American Regional meeting held in May 2020.

Zimbabwe: GBIF Zimbabwe installed the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) that is hosted at Bindura University of Science Education. The node also launched its website.

Argentina: Mentor to new nodes. Support and organization of regional nodes meeting.

Australia: The Atlas plans to continue provide support to the Living Atlases community, assisting the work of the Living Atlas coordinators. In addition, continue to involve the Living Atlas coordinators in the Atlas’ Systems upgrade work the Atlas has undertaken to help assist the Living Atlases community during this transition.

Belgium: Help to pilot hosted portals at regional, national and institutional level.

Benin: In the framework of our master program, courses are being registered and will be provided to JRS Biodiversity Foundation, our donor. It will be then popularized and disseminated to be available for the general public.

Brazil: Engagement with the private sector (see also Activity 3c), and best practices for engaging with indigenous peoples and local communities including community-based monitoring. Exploring differential pricing structure for additional services provided by GBIF Secretariat, e.g. hosted portals and national IPT installations, training services, etc, based on country membership status (i.e. Voting Participant, Associate Participant, non-Participant/Observer).

Cameroon: In 2021, GBIF Cameroon plans to upgrade its Biodiversity Information System. It plans to connect its system to the databases of future local partners in order to centralize the data for better decision-making. This activity can only be fully realized with the validation of the project submitted to the BID programme.

Colombia: Support the actions of the projects "Improving biodiversity data quality: a regional need from digitization to data repatriation" (CESP2020-018) and "National Portals Workshop: taxonomic databases, species data information and visualization" (CESP2020-006). Mentoring project with Bolivia, a potential GBIF country participant. Continue the translation activities of GBIF content into Spanish.

France: GBIF France will continue to participate in the activities of the Living Atlases Community.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Explore possibilities to jointly organize Hindu Kush Himalaya level regional workshop to define data gap in collaboration with Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS) and other GBIF Asian Nodes.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to attend the GBIF network webinars. iDigBio will continue its partnerships, discussions, and collaborations among the major global aggregators via the CDIWG.

Japan: Continuous improvement of S-Net system (domestic website for searching natural history specimens).

Korea, Republic of: Back-up system of KBIF will be upgraded.

NatureServe: Our goal for 2021 is to try to translate the training materials resulting from the Tropical Andes Observatory project into Portuguese, English and Spanish and to upload the code and data so that anyone in the region can use, modify and improve them.

Netherlands: Continued support for the Living Atlases officer. Together with Naturalis continue to explore the implementation of a national hosted biodiversity portal.

Nigeria: Through GBIF’s Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP), we hope to improve our national IPT and capacity building through active involvement of stakeholders from all geo-ecological zones of Nigeria. The node is also looking forward to becoming a voting participant of GBIF, with support from the government.

Norway: As part of the BioDATA project, GBIF Norway will offer node mentoring services to partner countries who make progress towards joining GBIF as new members (see also Activity 1e).

Poland: We hope that Belarussian CESP project will be realized as planned, enabling transfer of skills, tools and experience from GBIF in Poland to Belarussian colleagues in relevant areas.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF will continue to look at opportunities to support the establishment of the Afican Coordination Mechanism (ACM), as part of the broad concept to establish regional offices (bullet 5).

Spain: In conjunction with GBIF-Portugal and technological partners EGI and Ibergrid, we have submitted a proposal to the EC for a project aiming for the development of a pilot biodiversity data portal for Europe. All Living Atlases activities continue.

Sweden: GBIF-Sweden excpects to continue participation in the GBIF NSG until the fall of 2021. We will also participate at GBIF GB28 and if invited the GBIC3. Apart from disseminating our knowledge through channels like GitHub (for code) and in the Living Atlases community (systems development), other Swedish participation in international GBIF activities includes coordination of nodes work, feedback with respect to informatics development projects, participation in strategic discussions etc. Collaboration with lots of other international initiatives continues involving individual SBDI partners, e.g. GEO BON, GEOSS, IUCN, UNEP, IIPBES, LifeWatch ERIC, Marine LifeWatch, CETAF, NPOMP, ICES, OBIS, EMODnet, IOC-GOOS, GLOBIS-B (EBV), BLS. Semi-locally within the Nordic countries leading the NeIC DEEP DIVE project for biodiversity information collaboration across borders in the region, remains on the list of planned activities aimed at equipping also other nodes. Likewise cooperation on data management and processing, support and training within ASSEMBLE+ (EMBRC) and SYNTHESYS (DiSSCo) plus cooperation with EcoTaxa and UniEuk on images are pursued.

United States of America: US Node will seek to be a pilot project for hosted portals for US data with BISON simple branding.

Zimbabwe: Have an Official Office manned by one person.

Publish a biannual newsletter to data publishers, keeping them informed of key infrastructure developments and best practices for complying with GDPR

Improve reporting of data use to data publishers, implement clearer display of use information on pages for publishers and download DOIs

Explore services for publishers to opt in to receive push notifications for new citations

Enhance regional helpdesk services

Continue the development of reference vocabularies used in data processing; mature the community of editors, discuss and coordinate governance, priorities and workflows

Argentina: Argentina has a collection catalogue (and institutions) since 2003. We keep updating it. Trying to reduce the number of IPTs to centralize all the datasets in one IPT (all activities suspended by COVID-19).

Australia: Comment from last year’s submission - "Develop a community of practice in the management of trait information. Develop a roadmap for trait mobilisation activities." 2020 progress - After a scoping study was undertaken, our overall conclusion was that the complexity of the data and the immaturity of current standards within trait based research communities would mean that the level of investment to achieve the goals would be prohibitive and we have decided to prioritise other activities at the Atlas.

Belgium: Hosted IPT installations.

Benin: Capacity building in data mobilization and data uses.

Brazil: Data usage reports for data publishers have been improved and made available on SiBBr.

Cameroon: Since 2018, GBIF Cameroon has identified some data publishers and enrolled others on the GBIF portal. However, the lack of training on GBIF standards and publication tools did not allow them to post data on the GBIF portal.

Colombia: Improvement in the national helpdesk for data publisher with new templetes by type of data and tools to data validation. Published a monthly report of publishing activity. Updated the guidelines to share data.

France: GBIF France offers data hosting and maintains IPT instances for southern countries.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to coordinate a national effort to digitize and mobilize specimen-based biodiversity data in the United States. iDigBio has staff dedicated to helping with digitization, data mobilization, and data ingestion.iDigBio has been working with GBIF on the global collections registry with the goal of having a unified source for information about biodiversity collections.

Japan: S-Net system and tools updated for improvement.

NatureServe: Progress on this point for 2020 is not characterized by specific activities but rather by the constant support that the more than 90 partner institutions that are part of our network get from NatureServe in order to mobilize their data towards GBIF.

Netherlands: NLBIF has mobilized datasets of several new data publishers that were educated in DwC-A data format, the use of the IPT, the importance of metadata (EML), new developments of GRSciColl, and the relevance of ROR and GRID identifiers.

Nigeria: In 2020, the node has published data made available from data holders, while some are underway.

Poland: IPT has been in use of GBIF Poland for years and still is planned to remain the main method of connecting data to the global network. Our server has been also in use by North Macedonian colleagues for publishing their data.

Portugal: GBIF Portugal mantains a trusted data hosting centre with and IPT installation serving 16 publishing institutions, seven of them framed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Three of the institutions are from Angola, and one is a private sector publishing institution.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF hosts an IPT which supports both national and regional data publishing. This includes helpdesk support.

Spain: GBIF Spain will continue to offer online support to data publishers also outside Spain in using IPT. We will assist GBIF Zimbabwe to configure and maintain its own IPT.

Sweden: Considerable progress has been achieved in regard to developing methods and presenting tools for sharing sequence data.

United States of America: As the US Node Manager has become more familiar with the US GBIF community, she has increased active participation in helpdesk type of activities.

Zimbabwe: GBIF Zimbabwe installed the Integrated Publishing Toolkit IPT that is hosted at Bindura University of Science Education. This is available for use by data publishers in Zimbabwe. We also conducted a training workshop on Data Mobilisation in January 2020.

Argentina: Try to reduce the number of IPT to centralize all the data sets in one IPT.

Australia: The ALA will be exploring data mining techniques to extract more useful impact metrics from science publications to improve our understanding of users and their data requirements. These analysis approaches may provide an opportunity for fruitful collaboration. 

Benin: Capacity building in data mobilization and data uses involve data publishers and encourage them to participate more in project calls.

Brazil: Implement clearer display of use information on pages for publishers. Improve governance and data flow.

Cameroon: In 2021, GBIF Cameroon plans to build the capacities of potential data editors with the support of external and local financial partners.

Colombia: Improve the monthly report of publication activity with data access and use topics. Support dataset publication and hosting from national organizations. Promote the use of DOI. iv) Promote publication of data from business sector and molecular data.

France: GBIF France will continue to support data hosting and publishing services for southern countries.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Sensitize data holders and data providers in ICIMOD’s eight regional member countries in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region about the importance of data publishing, and use of global publishing platform.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its efforts to coordinate the national digitization effort. iDigBio will continue to work with GBIF on the global collections registry.

Japan: Tools (including dictionaries for controlled vocabularies) to be updated for improvement.

NatureServe: By 2021 we plan to not only maintain constant support for NatureServe’s network partners in Canada and the US but also to provide additional support for the ability to manage data with lower degrees of uncertainty.

Netherlands: NLBIF closely follows the developments of GRSciColl and aims at the registration of all Dutch data publishers and their collections at GRSciColl.

Nigeria: In the coming year, we would ensure that data publishers are strengthened through training and workshop programmes, which will keep them informed of the key infrastructural developments and best practices in compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)

Poland: We are going to explore additional tools and resources available (citation widget, Registry, reference vocabularies), as well as refresh and improve metadata published by our existing IPT instances. New users of IPT in Poland should appear in 2021 and they will receive guidance from the National Node.

Portugal: Maintain the support of the trusted data hosting centre and enlarge the number of SLAs.

South Africa: The Node will continue hosting of the IPT and will continue its support to data publishers.

Sweden: Further development of mechanisms enabling molecular information to be harvested, managed and presented is highly prioritized by GBIF-Sweden. Additionally we will offer workshops and user training events on how to use the Swedish and international infrastructures, and specifically support individual nodes requiring assistance mobilizing data.

United States of America: USGS will explore ways to inform data providers about their data being used in prominent policy documentation like the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees C.

Zimbabwe: Conduct Training Workshops on Data Mobilisation to new Publishers. Assist new data publishers with data cleaning and publication

Actively seek new Voting Participant countries, and return of former Voting Participants, to broaden the funding base ahead of the 2023-2027 financial period; in particular highlighting to governments the value of GBIF in meeting data and capacity needs for national implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

Initiate annual call for regional outreach project proposals to support expansion of national participation, as well as improved connections with relevant regional organizations and networks (support from core funds dependent on 2021 budget evaluation). Responds to recommendations 5 and 6 of the GBIF 20-year review

Explore additional funded capacity programmes, within the broad umbrella of the BID programme, focussed on underrepresented regions in GBIF. Responds to recommendation 5 of the GBIF 20-year review

Maintain and expand internationalization of GBIF.org, especially translation of key page content and digital documentation, minimally for the six official UN languages and further languages based on demand and volunteer translator capacity

Develop a 'catalogue of GBIF services' to support implementation of the resource mobilization strategy (see Activity 1g). This will include completion and curation of the capacity portfolio developed in 2020, with additional components of services offered by GBIF to include in outreach materials for potential funders and implementation partners

Develop communications to support the GBIF value proposition (€10,000). Responds to recommendations 4a and 7 of the GBIF 20-year review

Argentina: Argentina participates actively in the translation of GBIF content. Support is provided, as a regional representative, to all countries that do not have a node yet, but are interested in joining GBIF.

Brazil: National calls for proposals were were launched (Programd PELD and PROTAX) that should support the expansion of national participation. Partnerships were also carried out with relevant regional organizations and networks

Cameroon: GBIF Cameroon has studied the possibility of re-mobilizing members of the Central African sub-regional network for managing information on biodiversity.

Colombia: More than 10 new publishing organizations in 2020 (143 to date).

France: Help for French translations: GBIF.org, BID, workshop materials.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Sensitize data holders and data providers in ICIMOD’s eight regional member countries in the Hindu Kush Himlayan region about the importance of data publishing, and use of HKH-BIF regional platform for data publishing or use of available in-country platforms such as in India and China: We wanted to explore this through CESP proposal which did not materialize. However, we aim to reach out to selective partners towards the end of 2020 and then continue in 2021. One-to-one sensitization might be necessary and ICIMOD will try to embed this agenda with biodiversity related actions in different countries in near future.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio is has continued to provide the services of its Node Manager as the North America Regional Representative. iDigBio has continued its involvement with professional societies, such as SPNHC and TDWG, and continues its partnership with other national activities, such as BCoN.iDigBio organizes two large conferences per year, the Digital Data conference and the ADBC summit, which facilitate expanded participation in the region.

Japan: Meeting occasions to enroll more organisations done.

Korea, Republic of: Two additional institutions participated in Korean biodiversity data network which are the domestic data providers and other potential participants.

Netherlands: NLBIF is funding a project to implement the ALA platform in Ukraine and mobilize data from Ukraine to GBIF.

Norway: The BioDATA project managed by GBIF Norway contributes to promoting expanded GBIF country membership in Eurasia (including strategic partners from Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Ukraine). In addition to the primary goal of providing academic training (Activity 1b), BioDATA aims to build the capacity needed for establishing national GBIF Participant Nodes (Activity 1c and 1e). Belarus joined as an Associate Participant in July 2019 and Armenia joined as Associate Participant in August 2020. GBIF Norway contributes to the nodes task group for developing a regional engagement strategy for Europe and Central Asia 2020-2022.

Poland: The Belarussian CESP project prepared in cooperation with the Polish and Estonian Participant Nodes aims at enhancing regional involvement in GBIF, including colleagues from Latvia and Lithuania. We hope that the initiative will trigger GBIF-related activities in these countries, helping to create a “critical mass” necessary to become official GBIF members.

Portugal: Contributions to translations of the global portal (gbif.org) and data platforms (ALA) to Portuguese. Contributed to translations of news, key documents and manuals to Portuguese.

South Africa: 2020 SANBI-GBIF will consider expanding participation through supporting the implementation of the African Coordination Mechanism (ACM).

Spain: Translation of gbif.org to be continued. Exploring ways to expand participation in North African countries in collaboration with Ministry of Science.

Sweden: As stated in 2019. GBIF-Sweden will primarily be engaged in the Living Atlases Community as a means to contribute to the expansion of the global network of GBIF.

United States of America: Continued coordination with the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) to increase the awareness and use of Darwin Core for marine biological data. USGS served on the planning committee for an IOOS-ESIP Biological Data Workshop in July 2020. USGS assists IOOS Regional Associations with understanding and implementing Darwin Core.

Zimbabwe: Trained new stakeholders in Data Mobilisation (January 2020) and Data Access and Use (March 2020).

Argentina: Argentina participates actively in the translation of GBIF content. Support is provided, as a regional representative, to all countries that do not have a node yet, but are interested in joining GBIF.

Belgium: French and Dutch translations to help maintaining and expanding internationalization of GBIF.org

Benin: Involve national partners and encourage them to more participate in project calls.

Brazil: Maintain and expand internationalization of GBIF.org, especially translation of key page content and digital documentation.

Cameroon: GBIF Cameroon plans to re-mobilize the members of the biodiversity information management network of the Central Africa sub-region.

Colombia: i) Support the translation of key page content and digital documentation to GBIF.org ii) Expand the participation of new organizations.

France: Translations to be continued.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio is planning a Biodiversity Summit in 2021, which will ideally be a collaborative meeting of the ADBC community, GBIF governing board, TDWG, and the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian). The meeting will feature the evolution and accomplishments of specimen-based science and the impact of digitization.

Japan: Provide meeting occasions to enroll more organisations.

Korea, Republic of: Two new institutions will participated in Koaren biodiversity data network.

NatureServe: In 2021 we plan to expand our efforts to Latin American countries, especially in countries where GBIF nodes are non-existent or incipient.

Netherlands: The Netherlands has a strong historical connection with Indonesia and houses a lot of duplicate specimens form Indonesia. NLBIF want to explore the possibilities of digital repatriation of biodiversity data and digitisation knowledge to allow further mobilisation of data from Indonesia in the near future.

Nigeria: The Node plans to increase the number of participating of data holders in its activities. In the first quarter, we hope to organize a physical meeting of stakeholders to discuss modalities for the involvement of the Government in biodiversity-related programmes.

Poland: Poland should take part in GBIC3 and develop connections with the Alliance. Our goal is to coordinate progress of GBIF in Poland with other important biodiversity-related projects like DiSSCo, trying to create an effect of synergy through proper connections and dependencies between them in the local landscape.

Portugal: Contribute to expand the awareness about GBIF in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) community, through documentation and engagement with countries or institutions.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF will consider the ideal strategic approach to support expanding participation, in line with the ACM.

Spain: Mantaining and expanding our ties with LifeWatch, increasing patrticipation with the LTER communities via our participation the eLTER Plus and eLTRRE PPP, projects (EC funded) Willing to get involved in BID projects pertaining the Caribbean.

Sweden: Technical development of GBIF-Sweden within SBDI will demand further engagement in the Living Atlases community. Bilaterally we have taken part in discussions with GBIF Norway and other colleagues on closer collaboration while suggesting and building amn updated and coherent Norwegian biodiversity infrastructure. We also explicitly expect to continue reviewing proposals for data harvesting projects on behalf of GBIF-Norway.Other Swedish participation in international GBIF activities include coordination of nodes work (decribed above), feedback with respect to informatics development projects, and participation in strategic discussions etc.in global context. Specifically, cooperation on data management and processing, support and training within ASSEMBLE+ (EMBRC) and SYNTHESYS (DiSSCo) continue as does cooperation with EcoTaxa and UnEuk on inmages.

United States of America: USGS will continue to seek new partnerships such as with the new National Park Service Inventory 2.0 project lead to facilitate faster integration of monitoring data into GBIF.

Zimbabwe: Engage new participants, including those from government and non-governmental organisations and have MOUs signed.

Organize the 3rd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC3), hosted by the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in Andalucia, Spain (dependent on external funding), to address the ongoing operation and governance of the alliance for biodiversity knowledge

Organize and run the 2nd SYNTHESYS+ workshop relating to citation of collections

Plan for the 3rd SYNTHESYS+ workshop relating to Digital Specimen data models

Argentina: Continue contributing to national, regional and global activities.

Australia: Comment from last year’s submission - "Review GBIF’s data pipelines work and data registry as part of an Atlas infrastructure review and refresh. Aim to align with GBIF where possible." 2020 progress - After consulting with the informatics team at GBIF, and developing a proof of concept for the Atlas, we have started work on adoption of GBIF’s data pipelines as part of our System upgrade work.

Benin: Capacity building, data mobilization, data uses.

Cameroon: A reflection on the establishment of a national implementation plan aligned with the GBIF plan has been initiated.

Colombia: Support and participate in the Latin America and Caribbean Virtual Nodes Meeting 2020. Promove the community discussion and ideas for the catalogue of the world’s natural history collections. Diseminate at national level the calls for the Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and Young Researchers Awards 2020.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Responded to GBIFS questions, other work done with GBIF through the year.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to organized, support, and host the North America regional meetings. iDigBio has worked with other regional nodes to establish a steering group for the region. The North America region is now planning to conduct quarterly "check in" meetings to retain engagement of the various stakeholders.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery has been carried out for the data from National Science Museum, a record of approx. 1.50 Mil.

NatureServe: Our work in 2020 has focused on connecting the activities of the biodiversity observation network in the Americas under the GEO BON umbrella and the GBIF nodes at the national level.

Norway: GBIF Norway contributes staff resources to the DiSSCo National Task Force (NTF) representing Norway in the DiSSCo Prepare process. GBIF Norway maintains liaison with the international organizations in the agrobiodiversity community to promote and actively support the harmonization with GBIF provided and solutions endorsed standards (see also Activity 2a, 3c, and 5b).

South Africa: Engagements with SANBI-GBIF Node Manager and HoD/DSI to evolve the Node planning and Africa portfolio

Spain: Collaboration with EU Nodes and EOSC to explore best ways to integrate Node’s services in the EOSC. This resulting in publication of services in the EOSC marketplace", and preparation and subssion of collaborative prokects.

Sweden: Text 2019-020: GBIF-Sweden will continue to take part in leading and contributing to the development of interconnections at national and international levels (GBIC 2 follow-up etc. incl. participation in Synthesys ). Comment August 2020: As stated

United States of America:USGS continues to be involved in and contribute to advancing and contributing to the ideas around the GBIC2 workshop sharing implementation and infrastructure suggestions as they pertain to the US and the various global communities of practice.

Argentina: Continue contributing to national, regional and global activities.

Australia: Further alignment work with GBIF on metadata registry and APIs for occurrence data.

Benin: Capacity building, data mobilization, data uses.

Brazil: Monitor GBIF activities and whenever possible participate in workshops.

Cameroon: Development and implementation of a national biodiversity information management plan.

Colombia: Continue to support the implementation of the GBIF program.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Working towards a Digital Specimen identifiers solution that could potentially be a global solution.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio plans to continue attending, supporting, and/or hosting regional meetings in North America as required. iDigBio will also continue to offer the annual Digital Data Conference as a potential venue for the annual regional meetings.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery will be carried out, and constantly updating and correcting the KBIF data.

LifeWatch ERIC: Plan for the 3rd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC3), hosted by the LifeWatch ERIC, to address the ongoing operation and governance of the alliance for biodiversity knowledge has agreed and is progressing.

NatureServe: In 2021 we will strengthen the connection between GEO BON and GBIF in the region.

Poland: Poland should take part in GBIC3 and develop connections with the Alliance. Our goal is to coordinate progress of GBIF in Poland with other important biodiversity-related projects like DiSSCo, trying to create an effect of synergy through proper connections and dependencies between them in the local landscape.

South Africa: Further engagements with SANBI-GBIF Node Manager and HoD/DSI to evolve the Node planning and Africa portfolio

Spain: Ongoing collaborations and activities with LifeWatch, Syntesys+, and CETAF. Increase collaboration and integration of our citizen science activities with iNaturalist.

Sweden: All code produced by SBDI partners will be thoroughly documented and published on GitHub. We will participate by developing tools for SYNTHESYS+ (WP4, WP6, WP8). Locally we will set-up of Tier 1 (documentation and help desk) & Tier 2 (support network) of SBDI. GBIF-Sweden will be represented at SPNHC 2021, and (by invitation?) to GBIC3.

United States of America: USGS will plan to attend the 3rd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC3).

Eligible countries in the Caribbean region have been extended to include all Caribbean island nations, all South American countries with a Caribbean coastline, and all Central American countries plus Mexico. Overseas countries and territories (OCTs) of the European Union and United Kingdom will be eligible to take part in regional consortium projects led from independent states in the target regions

In additional to data mobilization grants at institutional, national and regional scales, the extended phase includes a new type of grant, the data use grant, which targets consortia bringing together end users and data holders experienced in GBIF data publishing, to address a specific policy or decision need through targeted data mobilization and the development of relevant information resources

Select projects in the sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean and Pacific calls of the extended BID programme, negotiate contracts and coordinate start of 2-year project implementation cycle

Run BID capacity enhancement workshops in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific to support project implementation in the extended phase of the programme, exploring co-location for GBIF regional nodes meetings during 2021 (see Activity 1c)

Launch the 2021 call for proposals under the Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP) (€80,000). Responds to recommendation 6 of the GBIF 20-year review

Launch the sixth call for proposals under the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA) programme, supported by supplementary funding from the Japanese Ministry of Environment, and including a 2021 data mobilization training workshop which may be co-located with the 2021 GBIF Asia regional nodes meeting (subject to agreement by the BIFA Steering Committee). Responds to recommendation 5 of the GBIF 20-year review

Subject to consultation with Participants and nodes, including discussion at GB27, complete, publish and begin implementation of the GBIF resource mobilization strategy aimed at broadening the supplementary funding base. Responds to recommendation 10b of the GBIF 20-year review

Argentina: Participation in 2 CESP programs (one as participant, one as coordinator), coordinating national co-financing for CESP, coordinated from Argentina.

Belgium: Help establishment of a second phase of BID in collaboration with the European Union.

Benin: Continue to exert the mentorship among partners.

Brazil: Brazil submitted a proposal under the Capacity Enhancement Support Program (CESP) to be implemented with Latin American countries.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio is leading the Collections Data Infrastructure Working Group (CDIWG) aimed at developing partnerships, collaborations, and a community of practice among the major global aggregators. iDigBio has joined the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and is helping to chair the Biodiversity Data Integration Interest Group.

Korea, Republic of: 3.93 Mil biodiversity data from 39 data providers have been provided and increased 68% from 2018. Approx. 1 Mil ecological data from National Institute of Ecology will be shared with GBIF in December 2020.

NatureServe:Nothing to report.

Norway: The GBIF CESP OpenPSD project developed by the GBIF Nodes from Spain, Portugal, Norway, Colombia, and France has documented best practices for mobilizing biodiversity data from the private sector (see also Activity 1d, 3b, and 3c).

Poland: In 2020, we used an opportunity of the COST Mobilise Action to activise some data publishers in Poland and strengthen links within KSIB. The most important external resource in this respect was the digitization project funded withing the European Regional Development Fund ). GBIF became a strategic platform for exchanging biodiversity data for all major projects financed by the “Digital Poland” Operational Programme. Over next three years there should be clear increase in data publishing activity from Poland made possible through this funds.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF has supported these efforts through participation on the EU-DevCo Steering Committee. The Node also supported the evaluation of the CESP project proposals for 2020.

Spain: GBIF Spain will be involved in 3 CESP projects that will take place from June 2019 to June 2020 (deadline extended until the end of 2020). We are coordinating the OpenPSD CESP project to mobilize data from private sector. We will be available to help in the second phase of BID programme if this takes place.

Sweden: As stated in 2019-2020: GBIF-Sweden will continue to contribute by offering opportunities for ist staff members to participate in coordinated activities aimed at expand the scale and scope of GBIF.

United States of America: USGS included in the Enhancing capacity for biodiversity data mobilization and use in support of sustainable development in West Africa, with the assigned Project ID CESP2020-005.

Zimbabwe: We had a small budget mainly from GBIF’s CESP grant and institutional budget.

Argentina: Participation in 2 CESP programs (as a participant).

Belgium: Help by mentoring BID, BIFA, CESP projects.

Benin: More frequent calls for project.

Brazil: Implement the proposal under the Capacity Enhancement Support Program (CESP) with the countries of Latin America for strengthening regional nodes

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its partnerships, discussions, and collaborations among the major global aggregators via the CDIWG. iDigBio will continue its participation and involvement in RDA.

Korea, Republic of:More than 1 Mil ecological data from National Institute of Ecology will be shared with GBIF within 2021.

NatureServe: We will leverage projects (e.g., Tropical Andes Biodiversity Observatory) to increase the relevance of GBIF data in the region.

Nigeria: The Nigerian node seeks to improve skills and development of capacity through CESP activities in a bid to advance the work of GBIF locally and internationally

Poland: The National Node will maintain active involvement in CESP and BID projects where possible.

South Africa: Continue discussions with DSI on funding options to support the Africa Coordinating Mechanism Business Case. Continued data mobilisation funding through FBIP large and small grants of ± € 645 000 will continue in 2021.

Spain: Aiming to contribute to the CESP and BID programs.

Sweden: As above, and in addition GBIF-Sweden will take active part in BID 2020 and CESP 2020 reviews.

United States of America: As part of the North America Regional steering group, help plan and draft CESP and BID projects as appropriate.

Zimbabwe: Lobby government to fund the node’s activities and apply for data mobilisation grants such as BID.

Participate in the ongoing Open Digital Specimen and Extended Specimen Network standards development and strive towards a common solution

Run an open consultation to review the state and direction of specimen-related identifiers across GBIF and document the expectations of, and opportunities offered by the GBIF infrastructure

Support the work of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and the Living Atlas community, in adoption of the GBIF registry; this will likely require mapping between dataset metadata and alignment of APIs

Explore existing and potential standards to better accommodate exchange of ecological data; promote collaborations between nodes who have identified a need for this (see also activity 3b)

Enhance the occurrence records clustering algorithm to improve record linkages, including better understanding of collecting expeditions and collector names

Explore standards and interfaces to allow brokering of data clustering annotations to data publishers; broaden the capabilities to include external annotations

Review the GBIF Metadata Profile to explore the feasibility and benefits of migrating to the latest version of Ecological Metadata Language (EML)

Review the Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) exchange model; explore potential for DwC-A datasets to comply simultaneously with Frictionless Data and EML data packages, to facilitate ecological dataset exchange and reuse

Revise the GBIF Data Validator to be consistent with data ingestion, and to follow best practices

Revise the GBIF quarterly data analytics, to follow recent changes in data processing, such as handling counts of absence-based records

Pilot phylogenetic browsing of occurrence data

Implement changes to the IPT as identified by the 2020 consultation

Argentina: Promote development of a shared domain model for sharing and linking all components of biodiversity information (slower development than expected)

Australia: Comment from last year’s submission –“ Align with international projects in establishing and using standardised tests and reporting.” 2020 progress - Continued support for TDWG standards and use in all data publishing activities. Involvement in the development of standards for citizen science data and metadata and machine observations through the TDWG Interest and Task groups.

Belgium: Help documenting a unified information model that covers the scope of GBIF content.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Have plans for implementing IIIF in alpha production. Review options for implementing IIIF; implemented beta version of IIIF viewer.

Brazil: The SiBBr team worked on the documentation referring to the standards and tools used on the national platform, produced tutorial videos and made it available on the website to assist standardization in DarwinCore and use of IPT by collection curators and researchers.

Cameroon: Adoption of a format for the exploitation of biodiversity data on the biodiversity information system.

Colombia: i) Participation in the "Species Information Interest Group" with the Plinian Core in TDWG. ii) Participation in public consultations of the "Darwin Core Maintenance Group".

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to develop partnerships and collaborations among the major global aggregators via the CDIWG. iDigBio promotes data standardization in its education and workforce development activities as well as in its data mobilization process. iDigBio has continued to support TDWG, including representation in key areas such as the Natural Collections Description (NCD) group.

NatureServe:During 2019 and 2020, NatureServe has been working on modernizing the data standard for biodiversity observations. This work has been focused on aligning the data standard that NatureServe network members use to mobilize information with the data standard used by GBIF.

Netherlands: NLBIF is part of the TDWG CD (Collection Description) group that is the devloping a new standard to describe collections. The output of this work is likely to feed into GRSciColl.

Norway: Representatives for GBIF Norway contributed to modernize and expand the support in GBIF for new data types for genome and eDNA data linked to “material samples”; and data types for ecological data sets based on the “sampling event” model (see also 3b).

Poland: At the moment we use a basic IPT version, without additional cores or extensions.

Spain: We routinely check and assess data quality of records published via GBIF-Spain using the "Darwing Test" tool (https://www.gbif.es/en/software/darwin-test/) and provide feedback. We organize on line training on data publishing and data quality. We are leading and finalzining formal submission of the Plinina Core Data specification to TDWG as a standadr for registering and exchanging Species-level information (https://github.com/tdwg/PlinianCore)

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: GBIF-Sweden will further work on taxonomic and other data standards for various kinds of "new" data types (molecular data, tracking data, sensor data).Comment August 220: As stated - but see below.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: The NBN is Improving data standards through convening a TDWG Task Group, the aim of which is to develop new terms and vocabularies for Darwin Core to express the vitality of the organism at the time of the observation or collection and any cause of death (https://www.tdwg.org/community/osr/how-did-it-die/). Sophie Ratcliffe will lead a workshop at the TDWG conference in September 2020 to work on the Task Group.

United States of America: USGS continued to promote the use of Event Core in multiple forums to increase adoption and gain feedback.

Argentina: Complete the pending 2020 objective and be able to obtain more information and training on Frictionless Data.

Australia: ALA intends to commence work on the inclusion of more complex occurrence data including event-core (e.g. ecological survey plot data).

Belgium: Further integration of Frictionless Data, EML and DarwinCore, see 2019 tool [Frictionless Darwin Core](https://github.com/frictionlessdata/FrictionlessDarwinCore)

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Move towards a beta production for IIIF. Plan for a more robust beta version and review launch implications.

Brazil: As many researchers have searched for ecological data repositories, SiBBr will invest in tools and standards for publishing these types of data. Review Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) exchange model; explore potential for DwC-A datasets to comply with Frictionless Data and EML data packages simultaneously, to facilitate ecological dataset exchange and reuse Participate in discussions and guide the community around aspects of persistent record identifiers and citation tracking. Revise the GBIF quarterly data analytics, to follow recent changes in data processing, such as handling counts of absence-based records. Explore options for displaying occurrence data from long-term sampling sites, piloting with projects like BIOSCAN and/or Norwegian ecological datasets (carried over from 2020). Continue to explore approaches for adding a phylogenetic/evolutionary dimension to the GBIF taxonomic backbone. Pilot phylogenetic browsing capabilities of occurrence data.

Cameroon: Implementation of the format for using biodiversity data on the biodiversity information system.

Colombia: i) Maintain the participation in discussions about data standards. ii) Continue technical discussions with other instances to consolidate profiles for share data.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): DiSSCo seeks to join forces with GBIF and other infrastructures to work on interoperability standards for natural scientific collections.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its partnerships, discussions, and collaborations among the major global aggregators via the CDIWG. iDigBio will continue to promote data standards and vocabularies throughout its various activities.

NatureServe: During 2021 we will continue to work internally and externally on the socialization of this new standard for biodiversity observation data and the levels of harmonization with Darwin Core.

Netherlands: Continued participation in TDWG CD.

Nigeria: The Nigerian Node plans to integrate new tools provided by GBIF in the publication of biodiversity data.

Poland: Due to planned increrase of volume, complexity, types, taxonomic scope of data published by GBIF Poland we will thoroughly consider applicability of new tools and standards available in GBIF community.

Spain: We plan to integrate Plinian Core compliant data in our ALA-based national data portal; linking species level information based on Plinian Core with occurrence-level data based on Darwin Core

Sweden: Data standards, data source development, and the development of connected tools are central to SBDI and GBIF-Sweden, Therefore to the benefit of SBDI and other BI research infrastructures, in 2021 GBIF-Sweden will among other tasks be engaged in the following activities: We will continue to contribute to the progression of standardization work in TDWG in key areas.Full ALA adaptation and possible development into a global site through international collaboration will be investigated. We will maintain our code-base on GitHub. Track, coordination and prioritization issues will be managed through GitHub project management systems. Authentication based on OAuth2 will be added to the former Swedish LifeWatch (SLW) infrastructure, thus making this mandatory for all export from SLW datasets. Code for integration of molecular data into the ALA platform will be added: version 1 for metabarcoding data. Links will be added to sequence data when reference libraries have been constructed; also to be continuously update d on web-site. Tracking and sensor data: The final merger of CAnMove and Zoatrack systems will be executed, extending ZoaTrack with CAnMove models. Cleaning/validation tools will be built for new datasets containing tracking data. WRAM1 (Wireless Remote Animal Monitoring) infrastructure with existing soft- and hardware (adding minor updates to ensure data security) will be maintained awaiting having WRAM2 in full production after initial data loading and performance testing under production conditions. New standards development also cover investigating how the complex dating of data of fossils can be integrated into the SBDI data layers by means of e.g. aggregation, and by mapping/ingesting special environmental and cultural traits for interpretaion of fossil species. A new REST based harvest service to ingest SEAD (Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database) data into the SBDI data layers will be presented, and all other related harvest services rebuilt as REST services using the SEAD Harvest Service as a template and adapted to work with the SBDI data layers. Data products production process will be establshed for phylogeny trees based on SUPERSMART pipeline, and products available through the SBDI Support Centre_ A system for pre-computed data products will be established, an image database for flow cytimetry set up in collaboration with Ecotaxa and a Nordic Microalgae extension added covering also related trait information such as information included in the HELCOM PEG (biovolume, cell size, toxicity). We weill operate marine data flow from University of Gothenburg (GU) to Swedish Meteorological and Hydrologivcal Institute (SMHI) and start adaptation of ´Nordic Microalgae´ functionality to ALA systems (incl. update of species lists). Further development of databases and systems for data distribution at the Swedish National Oceanographic Data Centre (SHARK) will increase the number of data types (images, videos, soundfiles, molecular data). A marine ALA portal covering SMHI, SLU Aqua, GU, NRM will be considered. An Investigation of mobilization of fish data in the FD2-database together with SLU Aqua and other SBDI-partners is at hand. The BioVel platform will be up-graded with SEEK-FAIRDOM and Common Workflow Language and migration from Amazon to SNIC finalized plus a pilot project for computer vision and georeferencing initiated. ´Plankton Toolbox´ developmentcontinues by a new version with major upgrade including statistical tools and additional algorithms (R and/or Python). Additionally new web services will be developed for mobilizing terrestrial vegetation/raster - and plot data.

United States of America: USGS will explore data formats like Frictionless Data Packages and NetCDF. USGS will also work to include eDNA data.

Managing of checklists in the CoL+ clearinghouse by an individual, or a group of collaborators

Assembling a backbone using managed checklists, or sectors from within them

Community contributions from patch uploads and decisions around taxonomic sectors (subtrees)

Complete outstanding tasks to integrate the extended Catalogue of Life in GBIF

Focus activities on:

Prioritize improvements to the Prokaryote taxonomy sector in collaboration with the Genome Taxonomy Database and/or the Silva group

Maintain and update processes for constructing the GBIF taxonomic backbone, including monitoring the content and helping to prioritize editorial effort (continued from 2020). €108,000 has been allocated in the budget to support GBIF costs. This work is in collaboration with the Catalogue of Life.

Implement a process enabling key checklists to be used in filtering occurrence data, such as Red Listed species and invasive alien species (carried over from 2020).

Explore feasibility of supporting national taxonomies for exploring GBIF occurrence data to better enable national level reporting (carried over from 2020)

Argentina: Keep working to publish more checklist at the nodes related on the CESP2018-011 and any other with interest (slower development than expected).

Australia: Improving the currency of taxonomic information in the Atlas and its application is an ongoing activity for the Atlas. In addition, we continue to work with ommunities through the Indigenous Ecological Knowledge project (IEK) to build vocabularies for plants and animal names in indigenous languages within Australia.

Benin: Still at work.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Continue to participate in GlobalNames Workshop and Catalogue of Life Plus meetings. Implementation of new Global Names services in BHL; implemented new names finding in Beta w/links go GBIF backbone.

Brazil: Two national reference lists, of the fauna and flora of Brazil, were incorporated as a taxonomic backbone of the national platform. A DarwinCore standard database was created, with more than 165 thousand valid species names, in addition to vernacular and synonym names. In addition, lists of endangered species at the global (IUCN), national and state levels have been added and related to the taxonomic backbone.

Colombia: Update of different national species checklists, supported by specialist groups and biological collections: Birds, Mammals, Freshwater Fishes, Publication of the National Catalog of Plants and Lichens of Colombia

Denmark: Development of the Danish national species portal www.Arter.dk includes incorporating the previous Danish national checklist “Allearter”, reformatting this to adhere to the normalised structure, as recommended when publishing in GBIF. This checklist, now called “Taxonbasen”, will be published in GBIF in 2020. Taxonbasen will contribute to GBIF with: Danish vernacular names for both species and higher taxonomic levels; An updated national taxonomy maintained by Danish taxonomic experts; National Red List status for species occurring in Denmark.

France: Update of TAXREF, the French national checklist.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): Nothing to report. iDigBio relies on services such as GBIF and CoL+ for names reference.

Japan: Training data for Endangered Species improved.

Korea, Republic of: We do updating and correcting the incorrect or misspelled names in occurrence records.

Netherlands: NLBIF co-funds the CoL+ project.

Nigeria: We conveniently utilized the names infrastructure tool embedded in open-refine, in filtering our data.

South Africa: As an institution SANBI makes significant efforts to support the consolidation of plant and animal names through institutional databases, which are consolidated into the National Biodiversity Information System. These checklists are also published to GBIF where possible.

Spain: Through our linkages with the National Research Council (CSIC) and Ministry for the Ecological Transition we and collaborating in the developing of (official) national species and how to a) publish them in GBIF as check-list, b) visualize them in our national portal and c) linking occurernce records to them (providing views, filters, etc.)

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: More taxonomic names and concepts (esp. related to fungi and procaryotes) will be included in the set of services offered by GBIF-Sweden. Comment August 2020: As stated.

Switzerland: Publication of national species checklists for red list groups and important invertebrate groups.

Argentina: Complete the pending 2020 objective.

Australia: Continue the work of the IEK project and inclusion of these vocabularies in Atlas tools.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Move to production: new names finding in Beta w/links go GBIF backbone, Implemented revised Global Names finder and links outs to sources in live site.

Brazil: A reference list for microorganisms is expected to be built, in addition to updating the current lists of flora and fauna species. Lists of invasive alien species also will be added.

Colombia: Continued work on improving access to the Colombian Checklist to feed GBIF taxonomic backbone.

Japan: Improvement of training data for Endangered Species.

Korea, Republic of: We will constantly update and correct the incorrect or misspelled names in occurrence records.

NatureServe: We plan to work with Arizona State University on improving our capacity to resolve taxonomic issues within our species database.

Netherlands: Explore opportunities for continued support to CoL+ phase 2.

Nigeria: In 2021, we plan to employ the best names infrastructure approved by GBIF in the improvement of our checklist and occurrence datasets. We would also ensure the availability of vernacular names as much as possible even for undescribed species.

Poland: We plan to established a country-wide service for taxonomic names of Eukaryota as a reference for local users. It will be created using existing external databases but our aim is at crerating an active community of local taxonomists around a system that would maintain and control checklists and create an infrastructure for taxonomy and related services.

South Africa: Efforts to mobilise taxonomic data and support the names infrastructure will continue.

Spain: We will continue working on the activities already ongoing in 2020 in this area.

Sweden: SBDI expect to further develop the taxonomy database Dyntaxa software and web service, including securing synchronization and interoperability with other international taxon databases, providing high quality taxonomic master data. Additionally analyzing remaining conflicts between the most recent version of Dyntaxa and the GBIF backbone taxonomy is highly prioritized in 2021.Names infrastructures for microfungi and procaryotes are being developed in international collaboration (Australia, Norway, Sweden, GBIF).

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: RBG Kew will continue to work with GBIF/COL+ partnership in providing nomenclatural and taxonomic data for use in the COL+ infrastructure.

Complete outstanding tasks to deploy an enriched catalogue providing search and access of collections, specimens and people

Continue data management activities for the collections catalogue, integrating data from differing sources; in particular:

Establish a global editorial team formed by key stakeholders and authorities (including Index Herbariorum, iDigBio, ALA, NCBI Biocollections, DiSSCo, CETAF and GGBN) to agree on future data curation workflows, responsibilities, mandate and issue resolution mechanisms, and to guide development requirements

Explore synchronization of content with the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) Registry (under development)

Pilot a profile of the TDWG Collection Descriptions to capture collection-level metadata; include taxa, geography, time and quantity dimensions as a minimum

Argentina: Keep working with our catalog and collaborate with the GRBio / GRSciColl initiative presented at GBIF

Brazil: Tutorial for publishing collection data has been made available on the platform SiBBr, in addition to campaigns with the various collections has been carried out

Cameroon: Launch of a reflection on the creation of a sub-regional natural history museum with the collaboration of external partners.

Colombia: Support the National Registry of Biological Collections RNC. Participate in the community consultation to GRSciColl iniciative.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Participated in the consultation on a global collections catalogue, contributed with a DiSSCo vision.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to support TDWG, including representation in key areas such as the Natural Collections Description (NCD) group. iDigBio has been working with GBIF on the global collections registry with the goal of having a unified source for information about biodiversity collections. iDigBio’s national list of collections has been test imported into the GBIF infrastructure.

Japan: Evaluation of questionnaire to know/analyses the status done.

Korea, Republic of: KBIF have started to support one institution for cataloguing their natural history collections from May 2020. It will be finished in December and the data will be shared with GBIF.

Netherlands: NLBIF as DiSSCo-NL NN has inventoried the collection holdings of DiSSCo-NL partners and mobilized these data in the Dutch NHC dashboard which is featured on the DiSSCo webpage.

Poland: The first step was done – thanks to the above mentioned IMBIO project a significant number of institutions began catalogue their assets in order to prepare themselves and identify relevant resources.

South Africa: The Natural Science Collections Facility, Funded by the Department of Science and Technology plays a key role in the development of catalogues for collections

Spain: The Spanish Registry of Biodiversity Collections and Biodiversity Databasesis an strategic pìlar of our infrastructure and we work routinely to keep it updated and useful.

Sweden:Text 2019-2020: Expanding the DINA web-based collection management system developed by a consortium of Swedish and international partners intendesd cover not only biological objects (including sequence data) but also paleontology and geology, will continue in 2020. Comment August 2020: DINA technically cancelled by December 2019, the data products achieved will live on and serve as described.

Switzerland: Update and completion of GRSciColl Swiss institutional records. >800 collection entities are for now registered within the Swiss GBIF collection databank.

United States of America: ADBC, iDigBio continue to work in advancing and facilitating sharing of catalogue collections.

Argentina: Keep working with our catalog and collaborate with the GRBio / GRSciColl initiative presented at GBIF.

Australia: We plan to adopt the GBIF registry and hence further align with GBIF on metadata standards and tools for the maintenance of collection level metadata.

Brazil: Add additional identifiers, such as DOIs and Continue data management activities integrating data from differing sources

Cameroon: Continuation of the reflection on the creation of a sub-regional museum of natural history with the collaboration of external partners.

Colombia: Support with review and metadata about Colombian Biological Collections to GRSciColl.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Establish a proto-version of the future DiSSCo collections index jointly with CETAF and investigating to use GrSciColl for global collection identifiers. For the index a minimum information for collections specification (MICS) needs to be developed in conjunction with work on the TDWG CD standard and based on the work already done in ICEDIG and SYNTHESYS+. Investigate solutions to clean up GrSciColl records referring to DiSSCo collections.

iDigBio: iDigBio will continue to support TDWG and the Natural Collections Description (NCD) group. iDigBio will continue to work with GBIF on the global collections registry.

Korea, Republic of: KBIF will support other institution to catalogue their natural history collections, and share the data with GBIF.

Netherlands: NLBIF will continue to support Dutch data publishers to catalogue their collections.

Nigeria: We will continue to collate and publish biodiversity data from different sources and also avoid data duplication by providing clear GBIF’s guidelines for data providers and managers, with a focus on decisions affecting citation and linking data.

Poland: We hope that within next 2-3 years a general inventory of specimens will be estimated at least in the members of the project consortium.

South Africa: The Natural Science Collections Facility, funded by the Department of Science and Technology plays a key role in the development of catalogues for collections, and this will continue

Spain: We plan to work in ways to synchronize our Registry and the GBIF Registry of Scientific Collections (GRSciColl) to make available the most complete, coherent and updated information through these two outlets.

Sweden: Continued expansion of the DINA web products for use in SBDI and GBIF-Sweden. However, DINA in itself is not specifically an SBDI or GBIF-Sweden activity.

United States of America: ADBC, iDigBio will continue to work in advancing and facilitating sharing of catalogue collections. iDigBio included in the effort to include persistent identifiers for specimens.

Develop guidance on use of tools and approaches for targeted data mobilization to address priority data gaps

Argentina: Continue with the publication of the national inventory of biodiversity and national lists of species. On the other hand, it is expected to feed the national portal with these national listings. (progress slower than expected).

Benin: Many data gaps are being identified and will be filled in the framework of the master program in biodiversity informatics.

Brazil: This theme was not prioritized in 2020.

Cameroon:Identification of skills likely to help the national node in completing missing data on the GBIF network.

Colombia: Mobilized data from Chocó hotspot, Caribbean and Pacific (marine data) and Protected Areas. Annual publication of biodiversity data in BIODIVERSITY 2019 about status and trends of colombian continental biodiversity. Annual publication of biodiversity data in the Report on the State of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources.

Denmark: Development of the Danish national species portal not only will share species recordings in GBIF made by users of the portal, thereby contributing to current data coverage for Denmark through citizen science. Furthermore, data from the Danish government nature monitoring portal Danmarks Miljøportals Naturdatabase, will be published in GBIF. Potentially 12.5 mill. records, with species representing most higher taxon-groups, recorded from the terrestrial, marine and limnic environments in Denmark - Hence providing better data coverage for Denmnark with regard to biodiversity assessments made through GBIF.

France: GBIF France is liaising with the French devlopment agency (AFD) who wish to feed the data collected along the projects they are funding into GBIF. AFD assesses they produced 30000 occurences records per year essentially in geographical and taxonomical areas that are not well covered in GBIF.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Advancing Biodiversity Informatics Capacities in the HKH- Regional Workshop (define data gap map for Asia) - **Need to explore possibilities of collaboration with GBIF, relevant institutions in HKH regional member countries, and Asian Node : We wanted to build this through CESP joint proposal among the four institutions CIB, KIB, IB in China and ICIMOD, but the proposal did not materialize. Also, given the current pandemic situation, regional workshop of such dimension and objective was difficult this year.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to expand its knowledge of what is contained within collections, which may help determine underrepresented taxa etc. iDigBio is working to determine what data exists in iDigBio but not GBIF in an effort to ensure all data is mobilized to GBIF.

Japan: Gap analyses carried out for fungal collection in TNS as a model collections.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery has been carried out for the data from National Science Museum, a record of approx. 1.50 Mil.

LifeWatch ERIC: LifeWatch ERIC has delivered a prototype on its LifeBlock platform, which can provide GBIF’s platform with desirable attributes, such as security, immunity and accountability on data use.

NatureServe: One of the key elements of NatureServe’s strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean is the mobilization of information on biodiversity observations made during Environmental Impact Assessments. Since 2019, we have been working with our colleagues at the Inter-American Development Bank to develop proposals and concept papers that can support the mobilization of this type of biodiversity data.

Netherlands: NLBIF is funding the ongoing project to mobilise biodiversity data from Ukraine.

Nigeria: The Node utilized available GBIF tools in its communication with other institutions.

Poland: Poland has been suffering from a lack of substantial investments over last years that created a general “data gap” – low percentage of available data resources present in the digital form. The volume of 1,6 mln of occurrence records was achieved as long ago as in 2008 and never changed since then. Our priority thus is to mobilise as much data as possible and engage institutions and organisations in data publishing.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF has been elected to and works with the Knowledge and Data Task Force of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to design guidance and templates for assessment authors, capturing knowledge gaps including those caused by shortage of available biodiversity data. These gaps will be used to engage research funders and programmers, as well as data-holding organizations, to catalyse investment in priority research and data mobilization. Initiatives such as the Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme (FBIP) aims to support funding of data generation in line with identified priorities nationally

Spain: We are mobilizing data from private sector in collaboration with Nodes from Norway, Portugal and Colombia through the CESP OpenPSD project, so far very successfully We are going in fluent communication with the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Regional Governments, and working together to find and implement ways in which GBIF becomes more useful to them, and on how to publish the data they generate in GBIF in the best conditions.

Sweden: Text 2019-20230: Among the collaborating institutions of the SBDI work will continue to develop and adapt systems for accepting and presenting new data types. Comment August 2020: As stated.

United States of America: Work with the Global Ocean Observing System and GEO BON to identify priority datasets related to Essential Ocean and Essential Biodiversity Variables such as phytoplankton data and seagrass data.

Argentina: Continue with the publication of the national inventory of biodiversity and national lists of species. On the other hand, it is expected to feed the national portal with these national listings.

Australia: Identifying priority gaps will become an area of active project activity for the ALA in 2020-21 under our strategic action 1.4 (Establish data priorities to ensure Australia has a nationally comprehensive, representative and adequate biodiversity data infrastructure). The work will commence with an initial review of possible approaches to assess national data priorities and we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with GBIF around this.  

Benin: Data gaps are identified every year and filled by students in the framework of their research works in the master program of biodiversity informatics

Brazil: Develop guidance on use of tools and approaches for targeted data mobilization. to address priority data gaps.

Cameroon: Organization of a consultation meeting with the identified skills.

Colombia: Identify the species and regions with the greatest data gaps.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Work on large scale digitisation plans will continue in DiSSCo-linked projects.

France: AFD is setting up an initiative with GBIF call Data4nature. A first side event is programed in Marseille, France, in January 2021 during the next IUCN congress.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its work to expand knowledge of what is contained within collections. iDigBio will continue to work to ensure that all data ingested in iDigBio is also ingested in GBIF.

Japan: Continuation of gap analyses to be carried out in some model collections.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery will be constantly carried out for the data from National Science Museum and some other KBIF data providers.

NatureServe: The plan for 2021 is to get our concept paper published.

Netherlands: NLBIF is willing to explore the opportunities to mobize data from Asia in general and Indonesia specifically. Naturalis has a long history in region through the Flora Malesiana project.

Nigeria: The Node seeks to integrate new GBIF principles and guidelines in the use of tools and approaches for targeted data mobilization in an attempt to address priority data gaps.

Poland: The goals of the IMBIO project include mobilisation of 2 million specimen records and 7,5 million occurrence records from other sources. In 2021 one third of that should be digitized and ready for publishing to GBIF.

South Africa: Continued engagement of SANBI-GBIF on IPBES task force to support knowledge gaps. Also, the Node will continue efforts to mobilise data through stakeholder engagement. FBIP initiative to continue funding data generation and filling of knowledge and data gaps.

Spain: Besides continuing the activities wih the private sector and enviromental administrations, we plan to recover and activate the participation of collections in the light of initiatives such as Synthesys+, DiSSCo and CETAF; and increase the involvement of the LTER Community in GBIF though our participation in the eLTER RI orojects (eLTER Plus and eLTER PPP).

Sweden: The foremost, and eagerly requested information to include in the Bioatlas/GBIF-Sweden´s services relates to the geophysical, administrative and socio-economic layers available in the Spatial Portal. Hence preparation and addition of such tools for analysis is prioritized. From the user perspective the introduction of the Bioatlas based on the ALA stack and replacing the older SLW Analysis Portal, rests upon the identification and installatiion of presently available and potentially added map layers to the Spatial Portal. The rapidly growing demand for structured data from monitoring programs (regular species occurrences and molecular/sequence/[meta]barcoding data) and tracking plus sensor data justifies prioritizing these as well.

United States of America: USGS will continue to work with key stakeholders like the Global Ocean Observing System, GEO BON, and others to identify key datasets for mobilization.

Scope and establish thematic data mobilization campaigns on zoonotic diseases, private sector data and sequenced-derived data, with calls supported by supplementary funding (see activities 1c, 3c, 5b)

Continue linking and integration of sequence-derived data in GBIF.org. Responds to recommendation 9 of the GBIF 20-year review

Collaborate with long-term monitoring communities to generate more sampling-event datasets in GBIF.org, and to help fill current data gaps. This work will guide development of enhanced standards for ecological data (see activity 2a).

Argentina: Continue with the promotion of the use of sampling event data model for ecological and monitoring datasets (progress slower than expected).

Biodiversity Heritage Library(BHL): Review options for transcribing from within BHL; implemented transcription ingest.

Brazil: Review options for transcribing from within BHL. Added new version of transcription ingest.

Colombia: Supported the citizen science community through iNaturalist platform. Linked a new citizen science initiative to invasive species in Colombia. Facilitated the publication of biodiversity data from the business sector. New datasets from vectors and hosts of human diseases and microorganism.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Demonstrator provided showing how expanded specimen data can be served using a Digital Object infrastructure and DarwinCore Archive pipeline.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): Nothing to report. Expanded data streams are fringe scope relative to iDigBio’s primary mission.

Japan: Three seminars were given to senior high-school students.

NatureServe: We took the initial steps to be able to mobilize data from Environmental Impact Assessments.

Netherlands: In 2020 the Dutch Biodiversity Infrastructure ARISE (Authoritative and Rapid Identification System for Essential biodiversity information) got funded. This infrastructure will deliver new data streams to GBIF. NLBIF is partner in ARISE.

Norway: Representatives for GBIF Norway contributed to documentation and implementation for new data streams for environmental DNA, and ecological data in GBIF (see also 2a).

South Africa: iNaturalist platform being put in place for Southern Africa by SANBI. Also a Node of IBOL is being developed, by the South African community. This will facilitate the mobilisation of molecular data. SANBI-GBIF is also engaged in looking at mobilisation of genetic data.

Spain: Planned Citizen Science activites have been affected by the Covid19 situation. However, works to integrate the national CS platform into the global iNaturalist Community are progresing smoothly.

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: GBIF-Sweden seeks to expand activities within the above mentioned fields of work in 2020. Comment August 2020: As stated: details below (2020-2021).

United States of America: BISON project helped mobilize several new bee and bat datasets. USGS worked with international group of collaborators on examples for aligning biologging data to Darwin Core.

Argentina: Continue with the promotion of the use of sampling event data model for ecological and monitoring datasets

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Expand ability to ingest transcriptions. Roll out more options for transcriptions and ingest.

Brazil: Scope and establish thematic data mobilization campaigns on zoonotic diseases and private sector data. Enhance the data exchange standards for sampling-event data, collaborating with partners that generate data to provide sources for filling current gaps. This work aims to establish partnerships with long-term monitoring communities.

Colombia: Continue to support the publication of data from the business sector and citizen science community. Promote the publication of sequence-derived data. Identify potencial dataset from monitoring communities.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): DiSSCo will further develop the nsidr.org demonstrator.

Japan: Provide webinar on biodiversity data use in education for junior and senior high-school.

NatureServe: We will continue our efforts to mobilize Environmental Impact Assessment data.

Netherlands: NLBIF will maintain the connection between ARISE and GBIF to ensure FAIR data and data interoperability between infrastructures.

Nigeria: We hope to publish event data that has followed strict guidelines and collaborate with partners that generate data useful for filling existing gaps.

Norway: GBIF Norway will contribute to the documentation, training curriculum, and implementation for new data streams for environmental DNA, and ecological data in GBIF (see also 1b, and 2a).

Poland: Mobilisation of occurrence records based on bibliography legacy sources is one of important aspects of the IMBIO project. The data will be connected with bibliography database. We expect GBIF to facilitate data filtering and linking this type of biodiversity data with bibliography resources. It will be possible to utilise this connection through our data portal and we think that GBIF Portal could also make it possible.

South Africa: Engagement with citizen science community and molecular data community.

Spain: Without amabdoning current and consolidated data strings, we plan to focus on LTER communities.

Sweden: In 2021 within SBDI the following data streams and tools affecting GBIF and GBIF-Sweden will receive special attention (see also 2a above): The WRAM2 Data Broker (WDB) will be used to supply data to the Swedish instance of the SBDI/CAnMove-run ALA-ZoaTrack module. Additional data providers as ZoaTrack (Australia), EuroDeer & EuroBoar will be integrated into the WRAM Data Broker. The current MoveBank integration will be upgraded to fully support WRAM functionality. Easy submission and exploration of sequence biodiversity data and associated metadata in relevant international repositories (using Marine Data Archive and GeoMe) will be facilitated. A service will be set up for mapping metabarcoding data against relevant reference databases (BOLD, UNITE etc.). Operation of the database of reference MOTU:s for major Swedish biomes is expected. More attributes to published butterfly monitoring data than presently available, and increased frequency of reporting will be enabled. Bird monitoring data and metadata in DwC-A format is being prepared for publication. Mobilization will be achieved of presence/absence vegetation data and metadata from systematic monitoring programs (in DwC-A format).

United States of America: BISON will focus on invasive species, pollinator, and federal data for mobilization. USGS will continue to engage with terrestrial, marine, and aquatic eDNA data providers. USGS will also continue to work with biologging data aggregators to determine the best way to represent these data using Darwin Core.

Launch data mobilization campaign for the private sector, building on guidance resources developed in 2020 (see Activities 1c and 3b)

Argentina: Keep promoting the CNC and participate at the ECSA in Trieste with a researcher and member of the RICAP. Keep promoting the CC through RICAP and National Node.

Australia: Work to promote and support use of the BioCollect platform across multiple communities. Involvement the international citizen science and standards communities on a global standard for project-based data exchange. Ongoing support for the federal Department of Environment and Energy (DoEE) via the MERIT application which is yielding increasingly hi-resolution and accurate rich data about Australian government investments in environmental interventions and outcomes. Implementation and release of iNaturalistAU with a membership agreement between the iNaturalist Network and the Atlas of Living Australia and CSIRO.

Benin: Involve them more in project calls and in GBIF Benin activities.

Brazil: An evaluation is being carried out on the best format for publishing citizen science data on the SiBBr platform.

Cameroon: Setting up a project to mobilize the data necessary for the drafting of strategic documents on biodiversity to be submitted to GBIF / BID.

Colombia: Facilitated the engagemet of new organizations from the business sector. ii) Facilitated the publication of the National Catalog of Plants and Lichens of Colombia.

France: Data publishing support in projects : “OpenPSD - Engage and promote the private sector in open biodiversity data publication”, lead by GBIF Spain. “To use the CBD’s CHM infrastructure and network in order to strengthen biodiversity data acquisition and data sharing”, lead by the French Head of CHM focal point (Denis Duclos, DREI, MNHN, Paris).

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Publish ICIMOD programme based biodiversity data from different landscape initiatives: Published checklist from Apinampa Conservation Areas. Later, will also be publishing checklist of vascular plant diversity along an elevational gradient in the west Nepal, central Himalayas (from published literature). Proposal development support to partners in the HKH regional member countries- BIFA/ GBIF-YRA : Endorsed BIFA grantee from Nepal. Will be closely working and supporting two BIFA grantee from Nepal and Bhutan.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued its data mobilization efforts with the ultimate goal/vision of mobilizing ALL collections data in the United States.

Japan: Engagement expanded through meeting occasions.

LifeWatch ERIC: LifeWatch ERIC metadata makes sure data published can be harvested by GBIF.

Netherlands: NLBIF launched a [new website]https://www.nlbif.nl to engage with data holders and citizen scientists. NLBIF has organised its annual meeting launched a call for Dutch data holders resulting in 9 new financed projects to mobilize data to GBIF, to engage new stakeholders or to develop biodiversity infrastructures to mobilize new data types. The total budget of NLBIF-call 2020 was kEURO 218. The projects are listed on the NLBIF website listed on the NLBIF activities under DiSSCo-NL and the Dutch NHC dashboard new data holders are mobilising data to GBIF.

Nigeria: The Nigerian Node ensured the involvement of institutions with all kinds of biodiversity data.

Norway: The GBIF CESP OpenPSD project (developed by GBIF Nodes in Spain, Portugal, Norway, Colombia, and France) engaged with new data holders in the private sector (see also 1g).

Poland: The IMBIO project engaged 18 data holding institutions. Other projects funded from the same financing stream pointing at GBIF as an obligatory “external repository” of the data (establishing repositories was one of the mandatory elements in the project assessment) will engage at least 5 additional important scientific institutions holding biodiversity information resources. Without any doubts, decision on choosing GBIF in all these projects was inspired by the KSIB network and earlier activities of the National Participant Node.

Portugal: Contribution to the documentation on the guidance for private companies to become data publishers through GBIF, in the framework of OpenPSD project.

South Africa: Engagements with data holders are an ongoing activity of the Node. This takes place through formal meetings, and one on one engagements.

Spain: As CESP OpenPSD project coordinators, we are glad to see the high profile we are receiving en in the current GBIF Work Program.

Sweden: By approaching citizen science groups, researchers and management practitioners substantially more data and data types are going to be published in the coming years. Comment August 2020: As stated.

Switzerland: Continuation of efforts towards a partnership with collection holding and research institutions active in DNA sequencing (linkage of sequence data, DNA-samples and reference specimens). Collaboration with national biodiversity data centres in order to capture and use species trait data.

Argentina: Keep promoting the CNC. Keep promoting the CC through RICAP and National Node.

Australia: Continued support for the BioCollect, iNaturalistAU and MERIT Platforms.

Benin: Involve them more in project calls and in GBIF Benin activities.

Brazil: Launch data mobilization campaign for the private sector, building on guidance resources developed in 2020 (see Activities 1b and 3b).

Cameroon: Establishment of a memorandum of understanding between GBIF Cameroon and local biodiversity actors on the mobilization of available data.

Colombia: Continue the campaign to involve more companies and biological collections. Establish an agreement with the National Environmental Licensing Authority to integrate data from EIA’s.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): DiSSCo is open to engage with natural history collections in DiSSCo not yet publishing to GBIF to supply data to GBIF.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue its ongoing data mobilization efforts.

Netherlands: NLBIF will launch NLBIF-call 2021 with a budget of kEURO 225.

Nigeria: We plan to improve collaboration among data holders including those from private sectors, thereby increasing the diversity of data harnessed for publication.

Poland: In 2021, at least some of the above mentioned projects should start publishing their data to GBIF.

South Africa: ANBI-GBIF and the Systematics Division will implement the 2021 National Biodiversity Information Management and Foundational Biodiversity Information Management Forum (BIMF-FBIP Forum), which is a key event to engage the data holders in the community. SANBI-GBIF Training event will be conducted alongside the BIMF-FBIP Forum

Spain: We plan to maintain connections made within OpenPSD and --building upon it-- expand participation of private sector in GBIF. Collaborating with other GBIF nodes and Secretariat is a given.

Sweden: By approaching citizen science groups, researchers and management practitioners substantially more data and data types are going to be published in the coming years. Support will be given to data providers (both within SBDI and externally). This includes e.g. standarization/cleaning of data; IPT education; advice on harvesting routines etc. See also 4b below.

Zimbabwe: Engage data holders that hold DNA sequence data and data from other Kingdoms other than Animalia and Plantae. Other data sources to be considered include Research Projects, Theses and Dessertations, EIA Reports.

Continue to implement workflow for prioritizing and drawing upon potential data sources reported through the ‘suggest a dataset’ tool, including involvement of nodes, mentors and crowdsourced solutions (carried over from 2020)

Roll out a workflow for processing data mobilization requests arising from the ‘suggest a dataset’ tool

Cameroon: Submission of a capacity building project on the use of GBIF publication standards and tools of national biodiversity data holders.

Colombia: Rescue of datasets from EIA’s and biological collections.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio continues to provide digitization and workforce development activities and events that are open to all. iDigBio also provides assistance with digitization, data standardization, and data mobilization within the scope of its mission.

Spain: We are making a special effort in updating our National Registry of Biodiversity Collections and Databases to have sound basis for identifying datasets that potentially may be published in GBIF

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: As in 3c. Comment August 2020: As stated (but see 4b below).

United States of America: USGS participated in a town hall at Ocean Sciences focusing on data rescue.

Brazil: Implementation of a workflow to process data mobilization requests arising from the "suggest a data set" tool.

Cameroon: Submission of a new capacity building project for national biodiversity data holders on the use of GBIF standards and publication tools.

Colombia: Continue the campaign to involve historical data from environmental impact assessments. ii) Rescue of research data in protected areas.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to provide digitization and workforce development activities and events that are open to all. iDigBio will also continue to provide assistance with digitization, data standardization, and data mobilization within the scope of its mission.

Japan: To be included in other activity “natural history collection safety net”.

Nigeria: The Node plans to support researchers with potentially valuable data who for one reason or the other are unable to put such data in digital formats. We would ensure the integration of such data into GBIF platform.

Poland: An important element for increasing a number of valuable datasets available online would be tools for their easy processing and import. The IMBIO project includes creating a number of such tools, including crowd sourcing mechanisms.

Spain: Using our National Registry of Biodiversity Collections and Databases, we plan to review, check and help those not publishing data, or that published long time ago to update their participation in GBIF.

Sweden: Planned collections management systems development outside of SBDI (but within consortium partners) will help rescue otherwise endangered environmental data hosted at administrative and research units.

United States of America: USGS will collaborate with MBON, NOAA, IOOS and others to find possible resources for data rescue efforts.

Explore strengthening of data paper model as a means of promoting data mobilization and quality control, through clear workflow, associated training and guidance, continue experiment of sponsored Article Processing Charges (APCs). May be integrated as a component of existing and future capacity enhancement and data mobilization programmes (see activity 1g)

Continue engagement with academic journal publishers to improve data citation and data publication practice; explore interest in publisher-administered, hosted IPT solutions for primary data uploads related to journal articles

Argentina: We began to dialogue with Argentine journals to start encouraging the publication of data papers.

Biodiversity Heritage Library, Biodiversity Heritage Library: Open and work discussions with Pensoft for article ingest.

Colombia: Continued support to Biota Colombiana Journal with the data paper model.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has been refining its citation guidance in an effort to improve attribution.

Korea, Republic of: Biodiversity research paper using the mobilized KBIF data has published in JAPB journal published by National Science Museum and Korea National Arboretum.

Spain: Without dedicating special efforts in this regard in our work plan, we fully support the rational and approach of this work Program item, and are eager to collaborate with fellow nodes and Secretariat in this area.

Sweden: Technical and economical support has been given to researchers publishing research datasets through GBIF.

Argentina: Continue promoting the publication of data papers in Argentine journals.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Complete Pensoft prototype and expand to other born digital publications. Bring Pensoft ingest to scale and look at other born digital publications.

Brazil: Will be explored strengthening of data paper model as a means of promoting data mobilization and quality control, through clear workflow, associated training and guidance, continue experiment of sponsored Article Processing Charges (APCs). May be integrated as a component of existing and future capacity enhancement and data mobilization programmes (see activity 1g).

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to refine its citation guidance in response to feedback.

Nigeria: The Nigerian node plans to explore the strengthening of data paper models as a means of promoting mobilization of biodiversity data and quality control following standard workflows.

Poland: Linking publishing of primary data with GBIF was in the scope of the Polish National Node for years, unfortunately all attempts to convince editors of journals to engage in direct publishing to GBIF failed. However, some of the contacts remain active and there is a chance to create at least pilot mechanisms of synchronous publishing of data as a traditional paper and a GBIF dataset.

Spain: Idem 2020

Sweden: Technical and economical support will be given to researchers willing to publish research datasets through GBIF.

Following open discussion on the Community Forum, explore preserving periodic copies of GBIF-mediated data on open public and research cloud infrastructures to both ensure persistence and promote wider and easier use of GBIF; develop recommendations and tools to support best-practice citation of GBIF-mediated data accessed through external cloud environments

Australia: The Atlas has commenced work on a project focussed on data quality. This includes communications and engagement activities; software development; and data management activities.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL): Implement the plan for rapid ingest of BHL Europe materials.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): A mapping of DiSSCo institutions GRID and ROR identifiers was carried out against GBIF dataproviders and GrSciColl institutions.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continually refined its data mobilization efforts and workflows, including moving towards IPT as the preferred publishing mechanism. iDigBio has also recently upgraded its data infrastructure. iDigBio has continued to provide guidance to the community on long-term data storage solutions and strategies.

NatureServe: NatureServe as the information broker between NatureServe network members and the GBIF portal has the mission of managing and maintaining the quality of this information. This model adds a level of complexity to the system but ensures not only institutional support for this published data but also technological support. In our organization we are constantly concerned about the quality and persistence of the information so that our data is defensible in a court of law and in 2020 the quality and persistence of the information has been one of our priorities as an organization.

Poland: So far, because of relatively low volume of data published by KSIB members to GBIF, we have not faced the problem of orphaned datasets. We are aware that this is a matter of time and there have to be proper procedures ready to use once the such cases arise.

Portugal: Engage with data publishers to offer support, specially to publishers with orphan datasets.

Spain: GBIF Spain has embarked in dataset rescuing exercises in the past. We have learned a few lesson inn the hard way. We are restructuring our way to approach to recovering "orphan" datasets. Now we are much more careful and try to do a better job in contacting responsible parties, and better taking into account they situation and concerns

Sweden: Bioatlas components have addressed the data persistence issue (see below).

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Nicky Nicolson, a member of RBG Kew staff, will work with GBIF on strengthening linkages between data on related objects, building on her work from here 2019 GBIF young researcher award. This work was delayed due to COVID but will begin in September

Australia: Continue the work of the data quality project, collaborate with GBIF on the development of data quality test routines based on the GBIF data pipelines platform.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): Persistent identifiers for institutions and their facilities will be implemented in ELViS.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to refine its data mobilization efforts and workflows. iDigBio will continue it work with the community on long-term data storage solutions and strategies.

NatureServe: We plan to continue in this trajectory offering the same level of support to our network members.

Nigeria: We will avoid orphaned datasets. We all ensure that all data are actively curated by the providers and metadata are updated when necessary.

Poland: Within two years we should scrutinize all datasets published by GBIF Poland in order to update their metadata, and to detect possible orphan cases.

Spain: We will reactivate this activity set taking into account the lessons learned.

Sweden: SBDI/GBIF-Sweden will operate and maintain existing data services (including bug fixes and minor upgrades of web services and mobilization tools). Setting up Bioatlas web services ensures high availablility using the SafeSpring cloud as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider. Support to providers internally - externally includes standardization/cleaning of data, IPT education, advicing on harvesting routines etc.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Nicky’s work will continue until March. Hopefully she will be able to spend time in Copenhagen with the GBIF team.

Supply clear indicator measures for the completeness and usability of data as part of GBIF.org dataset pages, based on examples such as the GEOLabel data branding model: explore DiSSCo’s MIDS standard (minimum information for digital specimen) (carried over from 2020)

Ensure that users of data are able to identify datasets or records that do not fulfil their criteria for geo-accuracy, whether they are accessing data through facets in the GBIF.org, via the API or in downloads (carried over from 2020)

Continue the work started in 2020 to identify and mark records suspected to be geographic outliers, and report to data users and publishers in suitable formats

Extend the documentation, prioritization and presentation of data issues identified during data processing, with particular focus on actionable items for data publishers and alerts to data users

Argentina: Training workshops in different areas of the country for data providers. Permanent help desk in the publication and data quality. Develop regular data set reports for data publishers and nodes. Participation on a CESP project of Data Quality.

Benin: Data quality are assessed and improved every year by students in the framework of their research works in the master program of biodiversity informatics.

Brazil: There is a curatorial work in progress, whenever suspicious records, geographic outliers are identified, publishers are not informed at the time of publication.

Cameroon: Revision of the decision establishing the steering committee of the biodiversity information clearinghouse. This committee is composed of a scientific committee of a data validation commission published by GBIF Cameroon.

Colombia: Optimization of data validation and cleaning processes before being published with OpenRefine and Python.

France: GBIF France help to run data quality tests before publishing datasets through GBIF and organised data quality workshops.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Continue providing technical services to data publishers in the HKH countries as required- in relation to data publishing in HKH-BIF: ICIMOD supported participation of a young researcher in BID biodiversity mobilization workshop. This strengthens our in-house capacities to provide technical assistance to data publishers.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio validates data sets at the point of ingestion. iDigBio also standardized various fields to enable indexing and searching. iDigBio participates in TDWG in various key areas, including the data quality group.

Japan: Assessment of data duplication and missing data carried out.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery has been carried out for the data from National Science Museum, a record of approx. 1.50 Mil.

NatureServe: Similar to 4A 2020 Progress.

Portugal: Support data publishers in data quality review of draft dataset.

Spain: Enable Darwin Test software (https://www.gbif.es/en/software/darwin-test/) to validate checklist datasets and sampling event data datasets. On-line Workshop planned for November: GBIF.ES online workshop: Biodiversity data quality.

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: Additional metadata will be covered in the above mentioned system for data validation. Comment August 2020:Se below - started before 2019-2020.

Switzerland: Engage collection holding institutions to complete the Swiss collector’s registry: The identities of 650 person names have been underpinned with biographic information. 331 entries have been linked to wikidata and/ or VIAF.

Argentina: Training workshops in different areas of the country for data providers. Permanent help desk in the publication and data quality. Participation on a CESP project of Data Quality.

Benin: Data quality are assessed and improved every year by students in the framework of their research works in the master program of biodiversity informatics.

Brazil: Clear indicator measures for data integrity and usability will be provided as part of the GBIF.org data set pages, based on examples such as the GEOLabel data tag model: explore the DiSSCo MIDS standard (minimum information for digital specimen) (transported from 2020). It will be checked whether data users are able to identify data sets or records that do not meet their geographic accuracy criteria, whether they are accessing data through GBIF.org, via the API or in downloads (transported from 2020).

Cameroon: Capacity building of the steering committee on data validation techniques.

Colombia: Validate the data with the new reference cheklists.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has a vision of integrating with other data validation tools. iDigBio will continue its participation with TDWG.

Japan: Improvement of checking process when data received from providers.

Korea, Republic of: Data gap discovery will be carried out, and constantly updating and correcting the KBIF data.

NatureServe: We plan to continue in this trajectory offering the same level of support to our network members.

Netherlands: NLBIF aims to broader communicate the different MIDS-levels and link MIDS-level requirements to DwC terms in the communication with data holders.

Nigeria: We will attempt to identify and mark records suspected to be geographic outliers, make corrections where necessary and notify data users of such changes.

Poland: As our data management system and portal is under construction, there will be a need to improve data quality of existing datasets presented by GBIF Poland in order to harmonize them with new ones that will result from the IMBIO project. In 2021 we will should review existing tools improving data quality available in GBIF community. All means of pipelining and automatic flagging issues in data that could help us would be highly appreciated.

Spain: Continuing with the Darwin-Test checking of datasets and training workshops ans the normal operations of the Spanish Node.

Sweden: Major data providers to GBIF-Sweden employ internal systems for data validation (e.g. Artportalen, where data are collated by groups of volunteers), and by adding a national instance of iNaturalist in 2021 using similar practices, additional security is brought to citizen science initiatives. This refers also to georeferences, for which an automated system checking/altering place names and coordinates is introduced by certain providers.

United States of America: University of Kansas will seek funding from NSF for a workshop to assess and improve geolocation quality of specimen data for North America.

Continue to explore the use of the GBIF data index to support stable persistent resolvable identifiers for all specimens and occurrence records (see Activity 2a)

Continue working with global community via the alliance for biodiversity knowledge to explore bidirectional data linking and synchronization with data management systems and publishers, to achieve faster and more accurate mutual updates on data improvements and annotations (see Activity 2a)

Argentina: Develop strategy and support mechanisms for expert communities to curate sections of GBIF data (slower development than expected).

Benin: Data quality are assessed and improved every year by students in the framework of their research works in the master program of biodiversity informatics.

Colombia: Data curation of large percentage of data published with an emphasis on taxonomic and geographic names. Quality reports for top organization publishers.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Enhancing data quality of Herbarium Specimens and museum collections- regional training for HKH member countries. Need to explore possible collaborations with Chinese Academy of Science and other Asian Node member countries.The regional scale activities was not possible this year, especially through linkages with institutions in China.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio has continued to streamline its data mobilization workflows. iDigBio is working with GBIF to transfer its national collections catalog to the global collections registry.

NatureServe: NatureServe’s dynamic model of curating information on biodiversity observations allows experts to relate relevant updates to our database that reverberate in the data we publish to GBIF. This model has been maintained through 2020.

Norway: GBIF Norway maintains a machine-readable persistent identifier (PID) resolver for entities in the Norwegian data streams to GBIF (see also 2a, 3b, and 4b).

Spain: Providing training on stable persistent resolvable identifiers for occurrence records and promoting their use. Continue to provide support, helpdesk, and development of software for management collection that generates stable persistent resolvable identifiers, and is compliant with GBIF’s IPT and Darwin Core.

Sweden: Part of SYNTHESYS+ activities 2020-2023 will cover this issue.

Argentina: Develop strategy and support mechanisms for expert communities to curate sections of GBIF data.

Benin: Data quality are assessed and improved every year by students in the framework of their research works in the master program of biodiversity informatics.

Brazil: The use of the GBIF data index to support stable persistent resolvable identifiers for all samples and occurrence records will be explored. Closer work will be done with the global community through the Biodiversity Knowledge Alliance to explore bidirectional data linking and synchronization with data management systems and editors for faster and more accurate mutual updates on data and annotation improvements.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo): ELViS development (aligned with development of a CETAF registry) to harmonize data curation in collections for loans, visits and digitisation on demand in DiSSCo.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to streamline its data mobilization workflows and will continue to work with GBIF on the global collections registry.

Japan: Improve the process for checking / updating the previous data. Provide guide for checking the error to the data providers.

NatureServe: We will continue supporting the dynamic model trough 2021.

Nigeria: The Nigerian Node will also continue to explore the use of the GBIF data index to support stable persistent resolvable identifiers for all specimens and occurrence datasets. We will also continue to collaborate with the global community to explore more biodiversity data management approaches.

Poland: This is almost the same case as in the point 4c – ensuring data quality needs proper data curation and benefits from cooperation and collectively used tools, including annotation. Any efficient annotation mechanisms for data published in GBIF would be of help for GBIF Poland.

Spain: Continuing 2020 activities in this area.

Sweden: Part of SYNTHESYS+ activities 2020-2023 will cover this issue.

United States of America: USGS will work to link the persistent identifier geo-community in the US with the international specimen persistent identifier community.

In collaboration with nodes, develop re-usable materials for supporting use of GBIF-mediated data, as well as best practices on data citation and publication of research data, in academic curricula, especially graduate programmes

Equip Biodiversity Open Data Ambassadors with updated resources, scale up thematic and geographic coverage

Engage with academic-based projects that could use GBIF-mediated data better in their pipelines and protocols, through collaborative external funding opportunities

Engage with professional societies to advance knowledge of GBIF functionalities in these user communities

Argentina: Keep continue attending scientific meetings to continue promoting the national biological data system and GBIF.

Australia: Comment from last year – “Further work on Collaborative Species Distribution Modelling (CSDM) and delivery of components and enhancements to support CSDM.” 2020 Progress - Ongoing development work to support CSDM, working with Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory BCCVL.

Benin: In the framework of their research works students in the master program of biodiversity informatics are working in fields of public health, threatened species, and invasive alien species. Data are more and more delivered in those thematic fields.

Brazil: Work has been carried out with the academic community, both supporting the publication and providing data analysis tools.

Cameroon: Re-mobilization of researchers and teachers who are members of the scientific committee and the validation committee of the biodiversity information exchange center.

Colombia: Report of data use from academia Participation in national scentific meetings to egage academia.

France: Contributions to modules in Biology and Systematics master and doctoral modules at MNHN and Sorbonne University.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio hosted the 2020 Digital Data conference in collaboration with Indiana University, Bloomington. The conference was changed to online due to the global pandemic and was a great success. iDigBio promotes biodiversity education via its monthly Biodiversity Spotlight written collaboratively by the iDigBio team, researchers, and photographers. Each spotlight includes natural history information, current research, and links to relevant specimens in the iDigBio portal. iDigBio promotes use of specimen data in research via its monthly Research Spotlight, which are often contributed by guest researchers.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD): Publication of Data Paper / Use of GBIF-mediated biodiversity data – with partners. (Birds diversity in the HKH ) : The work in Birds of Far-eastern Himalayan Landscape is in progress. However, it is not a data paper generated through use of GBIF mediated datasets for now. This would be a literature based resource dataset.

Japan: Numbers of data from Japan increased.

Netherlands: NLBIF presented the added value of open and FAIR biodiversity data at NAEM (Netherland Annual Ecology Meeting).

Poland: KSIB has a status of a scientific network and all official members represent academic community. Therefore the need for close cooperation with this group of stakeholders is well understood. In current circumstances of scientific life in Poland (and most probably elsewhere) there is a strong need of linking GBIF datasets with standard crediting mechanisms as with traditional scientific papers. We find data papers a step in this direction although it is suitable only for a small portion of scientific work. The expected system should directly link scientific papers and undrlying databases with existing systems of rewarding (impact factors and other widely adopted measures of scientific quality). This is just to describe the current attitude and opinion of the National Node and its cooperators. With regard to ongoing activities in this field, the main achievement is maintaining interest of the local scientific community in GBIF, which is evident in numbers of institutions participating in digitization projects (mentioned above in point 3c).

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF is engaging universities to support biodiversity informatics curriculum implementation. Here the Node has appointed a postdoc to develop curriculum in biodiversity data science. Also two Masters student bursaries have been awarded with a focus on supporting research, as well as data mobilisation and publishing of biodiversity data (sponges and amphipods). The SANBI-GBIF e-learning platform will be used to as a platform to engage the community with relevant documentation and capacity enhancement materials in biodiversity informatics areas.

Spain: Continue engaging academia. Make an inventory of masters and university degrees that promote GBIF data in classrooms.

Sweden: Text 2019-2020: GBIF-Sweden participates, alongside consortium partners in the Swedish Biodiversity data Infrastructure, in a great number of activitie directed towards educational and research institutes. Comment August 2020: As stated.

Zimbabwe: Held a Data Access and Use Workshop for academia in Zimbabwe in March 2020.

Argentina: Keep continue attending scientific meetings to continue promoting the national biological data system and GBIF.

Australia: Later this year the ALA will complete a scoping study that will provide recommendations for how best to engage with the higher education sector and this work could offer important learnings for activity 5A. Further development work to operationalise CSDM. The Atlas is working in partnership with the EcoCommons Australia project.

Benin: In the framework of their research works students in the master program of biodiversity informatics are working in fields of public health, threatened species, and invasive alien species. Data are more and more delivered in those thematic fields.

Brazil: An effort will be made to make GBIF tools available to the academic community.

Cameroon: Relaunch of meetings with the scientific committee and the validation commission of the biodiversity information exchange center.

Colombia: Promove the GBIF network in national scentific meetings to engage universities.

France: Participations to master and doctoral modules to be continued

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio is currently planning the 2021 Digital Data conference, which will include expanded online participation based on the success of the 2020 conference. iDigBio is planning a Biodiversity Summit in 2021, which will ideally be a collaborative meeting of the ADBC community, GBIF governing board, TDWG, and the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian). The meeting will feature the evolution and accomplishments of specimen-based science and the impact of digitization. iDigBio will continue to publish newsletters, including Biodiversity Spotlight and Research Spotlight articles.

Japan: Continue to increase numbers of data from Japan.

LifeWatch ERIC: GBIF will be asked to join LifeWatch ERIC supported MSc curriculum on e-Biodiversity and Ecosystem Sciences (EBES)

Netherlands: NLBIF aims to introduce the manifold uses of GBIF data in university curricula in the Netherlands.

Nigeria: We plan to initiate the incorporation of GBIF programmers into school curricula and further provide support materials for student projects and those of early-career researchers.

Poland: We expect growing interest in GBIF as a result of current engagement of scientific community in digitization projects. It should be more pronounced once data being digitized become visible in GBIF and individuals and owner institutions start track their datasets and understand better the role and potential in GBIF community and tools.

South Africa: Work will continue to appoint a BDI Research Chair. SANBI-GBIF is engaging the Department of Science and Innovation, previous Department of Science and Technology, to support a Priority Research Chair.

Spain: Engaging with professional societies: specially with the Spanish-Portuguese Botanical Collections Association, and with the Spanish LTER network.

Sweden: According to the SBDI Communications Plan established (public and internal presence) the old BAS (Biodiversity Atlas Sweden) and SLW (Swedish LifeWatch) web will be continued (news-blog, posters, presentations, teaching events, meeetings and conferences) until eventually by 2021 being replaced by the new SBDI web primarily directed to the research community. To satisfy the needs of academia - but also management officials - we develop adaptive models for species distribution presentation, used for generating map layers with probability values for species occurrence and probable species lists as support for inventorying/reporting, verifying uploaded reports etc. By adding R-tools for calculating Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), and biodiversity indicators and indices, such as Species richness, Shannon-Wiener index, Redlist-index and core SE BI 2020 vindicators, partly through integration with the Biological Index Calculation Tool (BICT), GBIF-Sweden participates very actively in providing requested services. Lending support and maintenance of Mirroreum (web-based front-end for reproducible research), by ther initial release of visualisation tools for long-distance movements and sensor data and by the continuous addition of relevant R packages and tools the benefit of GBIF-Sweden´s activities in 2021 are clearly demonstrated.

Switzerland: Promote GBIF data use and data sharing at Swiss universities and research institutions.

Zimbabwe: Continue to engage academia and projects that could use GBIF-mediated data.

Coordinate work of the expert group on mobilization and use of data on zoonotic diseases (funding of face to face meetings dependent on 2021 budget evaluation). Responds to recommendation 10a of the GBIF 20-year review

Benin: Needs of information to support decisions are identified and reported back by students (in the master program of biodiversity informatics) in the framework of their internships in institutions so that their research topics are based on them.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): In FY20, iDigBio sponsored the attendance of 1,860 participants from 323 institutions to 49 distinct workshops, webinars, symposia, and other events that targeted digitization and research related topics. These community-driven activities have led to improved digitization practices, increased involvement in digitization and training, and adoption of instruments and informatics tools that improve the efficiency and scalability of digitization and research workflows in all types of biodiversity collections.

Japan: Periodical review of documents and administrative process carried out.

NatureServe: During 2020 we have worked on the development of a concept paper that brings to discussion the possibility of using biodiversity data from Environmental Impact Assessments that we intend to publish in 2021.

Netherlands: The NLBIF node manager as Open Biodiversity Data Ambassador will document user needs for GBIF data wherever relevant.

Spain: Not really on progress: We disagree from the approach taken by GBIF of linking GRIIS datasets to the Spain country pages. These datasets are not compiled following the official procedures and quality checks, and are not endorsed by the Ministry. We aim to engage in a productive discussion with Secretariat to redirect these efforts, so these datasets are publishing in a less confusing way.

Benin: Needs of information to support decisions are identified and reported back by students (in the master program of biodiversity informatics) in the framework of their internships in institutions so that their research topics are based on them

Brazil: Follow the process of the expert group on mobilization and use of data on zoonotic diseases.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio currently has at least 27 distinct workshops, webinars, symposia, and other events planned through the end of 2020.

Japan: Provide “guidebook” to data providers (and potential data providers) to show the process from data provision to incorporation to GBIF and data use.

NatureServe: Provide further guidance on how to go about publishing Environmental Impact Assessment data to GBIF.

Poland: Understanding needs of end users and target audiences is an important element of work on the portal and data management system that is under construction now. In 2021, we plan to prepare questionnaires and surveys and better know expectations of our users, in order to create as many useful tools as possible.

Spain: Exploring ways on how to engage in these activities in a productive way.

Sweden: We expect to provide an action list for data flows relevant to media content as a to do-list supporting LA community development.

Publish outcomes of the analysis of primary data needs for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, promote at relevant fora including the COP15 meeting of the CBD in Kunming, China

Showcase tools and practices for use of GBIF in Red Listing and other species assessment processes including Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), as well as in science-policy processes such as national ecosystem assessments

Australia: This activity is well aligned with ALAs strategy, particularly in the context of Strategic Action 4.2 (support major national biodiversity assessment, reporting and monitoring programs). The ALA are actively partnering with the Australian State of the Environment Reporting program and the analysis methods this work will develop could be useful in a global context.

Belgium: Explore and prototype a tool, based on occurrences API, that will return a species list from a user-defined polygon.

Benin: In light of the research products achieved in using data we will contribute to update biodiversity assessment.

Brazil: Through the customization of the Living Atlas tool, Brazil has provided analysis tools to support the process of assessing endangered species. The lists of endangered species published in the country were also made available in SiBBr.

Colombia: Analysis of primary data to the VI National Report on Biodiversity and OCDE Environmental Report.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio supported and participated in the annual WeDigBio event, which mobilizes participants to create digital data about biodiversity specimens. In addition, WeDigBio held a mid-year virtual event to engage participants during the safer-at-home period.

NatureServe: During 2020 we have supported the development of the IPBES Alien Invasive Species Assessment First Order draft. And we have also produce all the analysis for the first IUCN Global Reptile Assessment.

Nigeria: The Node plan to utilize new working documents and also implement new tools in the assessment of conservation status of Nigerian species

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF supported the evaluation of proposals commissioned by the Secretariat, to carry out an analysis of primary data needs for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Sweden: As stated.

Switzerland: Publication of annotated national checklists for selected beetle families, with sharing of the underlying occurrence data on GBIF prior to publication 1 and 2.

Benin: In light of the research products achieved in using data we will contribute to update biodiversity assessment

Brazil: Monitor the activities and tools available at GBIF to support biodiversity assessments.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio will continue to support and participate in the annual and virtual WeDigBio events.

LifeWatch ERIC: The Workflows developed by LifeWatch ERIC within its technical composability layer on the assessment of invasive species will make extensive use of GBIF data.

NatureServe: Continue the work in the IPBES Alien Invasive Species Assessment.

Netherlands: NLBIF will engage with the Dutch ecological community to start mobilizing EBV ready datasets.

Poland: Providing support fo biodiversity assessment and use of data in fields of environmental biology, phylogeography, ecology etc. remains one of the basic goals of activities of KSIB. As GBIF in Poland stems from the scientific community, we see the fitness of data for scientific use as a immanent aspect of data we produce. Plans for 2021 cover also creating tools for data analysis and facilitating biodiversity assessments.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF will support biodiversity assessment efforts through work on the IPBES knowledge and data task force.

Spain: Exploring ways on how to engage in these activities in a productive way.

Sweden: Investigating the establishment of a formal SBDI User Reference Group and its interaction with the Support Service Centre and a digital user forum.

Switzerland: Continuation of data digitization activities in relation with running programs of the Federal Office of Environment.

Launch Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and Young Researchers Awards competitions for 2021 (€25,000)

Explore opportunites to respond to systematic review of research enabled by access to GBIF-mediated data

Expore options for using supplementary funds to support a Grand Challenge competition, targeting data mobilization and analysis to address a high-profile challenge for research and/or policy. Responds to recommendation 4b of the GBIF 20-year review

Benin: We advise GBIF to create a prize to reward best achievements in data mobilization and data uses.

Brazil: Report templates related to data uses and download have been improved in SiBBr.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): iDigBio tracks and publishes statistics for its website, data portal, data use, and events. These statistics are reviewed regularly at the monthly Steering Committee meetings.

South Africa: SANBI-GBIF will develop a guiding example of the data mobilisation activities of the Node.

Spain:Assessing the recommendations of the GBIF 20-year review, in the light of the country’s needs and priorities and defining ways in implementing those found relevant and feasible in the national context.

Sweden: As stated. Automated user statistics are employed by SBDI.

Benin: We advise GBIF to create a prize to reward best achievements in data mobilization and data uses.

Brazil: Assessment of the tools available at GBIF on data tracking.

Colombia: Tracking of data use in national scenarios diferent to scientific publications.

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio): "iDigBio plans to conduct a community survey in early 2021 to assess the impact of its efforts and to gather community input. iDigBio will continue to track and publish statistics for its website, data portal, data use, and events.

Japan: Monitor access to JBIF website and Science museum net website.

LifeWatch ERIC: The Workflows developed by LifeWatch ERIC within its technical composability layer on the impact of invasive species on the native European Biodiversity and Ecosystems will make extensive use of GBIF data.

Nigeria: In 2021, we would design a sustainable method for monitoring the published literature utilized by researchers and identify those emanating from NgBIF publications. We will also encourage young researchers to compete for GBIF’s prices.

South Africa: The efforts to reinforce the data-science-policy value chain through initiatives like the Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme of SANBI, will continue into 2021.

Spain: Implementing the conclusion drawn from the activities mentioned for 2020 in the Nodes' plans.

Sweden: Key Performance indicators are reported annually to the funding agencies of SBDI (Sw. Resarch Council + co-funding consortium members).