Guidance for private companies to become data publishers through GBIF

Figueira R, Beja P, Villaverde C, Vega M, Cezón K, Messina T, Archambeau A, Johaadien R, Endresen D & Escobar D (2020) Guidance for private companies to become data publishers through GBIF: Template document to support the internal authorization process to become a GBIF publisher. Copenhagen: GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.35035/doc-b8hq-me03

Rui Figueira, Pedro Beja, Cristina Villaverde, Miguel Vega, Katia Cezón, Tainan Messina, Anne-Sophie Archambeau, Rukaya Johaadien, Dag Endresen & Dairo Escobar

The document Guidance for private companies to become data publishers through GBIF is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.

https://doi.org/10.35035/doc-b8hq-me03

Version 2.0, June 2020

This document is also available in PDF format and in other languages: español, français, Português.

This document is a contribution to the OpenPSD project: Promoting publication and use of private-sector data on biodiversity, a joint creation of the GBIF nodes of Spain, Portugal, Norway, France and Colombia and the companies EDP, CIBIO and Asplan Viak, and co-funded by the GBIF Secretariat through its Capacity Enhancement Support Programme.

Sea fig (Carpobrotus edulis), Aljezur, Portugal. Photo 2020 sheborg via iNaturalist research-grade observations, licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

It is proposed in this document to involve company as a publisher of biodiversity data on the platform of GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

In the context of global biodiversity decline, species occurrence and abundance data are essential tools for planning, implementing and monitoring of conservation and sustainable use strategies. This importance is recognized on a global scale by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, namely SDG14 and SDG15, to which GBIF becomes instrumental for the assessment of the progress towards the goals. Likewise, Aichi Target 19 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) uses the publication of data through GBIF by 2020 as one of the indicators to measure the Target’s compliance .

Alongside universities, research institutes and governmental agencies, the business sector can play a key role here as it develops thousands of environmental impact assessments locally and worldwide, which annually produce millions of records. However, participation in this effort has been very low as data produced are never or very rarely made widely available. In this area, company could take a prominent position at national / international level, contributing with data to GBIF in an organized and systematic way.

Therefore, notwithstanding the necessary care with aspects of intellectual property and confidentiality, it is proposed to carry out a proof of concept to develop and evaluate a model of biodiversity data publication by company, which works as a case study for the company and to GBIF. This exercise would have several advantages for company, helping to consolidate its reputation at national / international scale as a leader in the field of sustainability and to strengthen data availability, integration and organization processes that could be used for future investments.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility is an intergovernmental organization established in 2001 to facilitate the free sharing and open access of biodiversity data. There are currently 59 signatory countries of the GBIF Memorandum of Understanding. GBIF provides a single access point (www.gbif.org) to over one billion global biodiversity data and is the largest biodiversity network available via the Internet. Data accessible through GBIF relates to records of more than 1.6 million species collected over three centuries of exploration of Natural History and includes recent observations by citizens, researchers and automated monitoring programs. Data downloaded through GBIF were used between 2018 and 2019 in more than 1,300 scientific articles in international journals. Globally, GBIF has agreements and provide services directly to global policy-making initiatives for the assessment and conservation of biodiversity and the environment, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the GEO BON (Group on Earth Observation - Biodiversity Observation Network).

Paragraph with information about national GBIF node

Publishing biodiversity data in GBIF is an initiative that could be highly visible globally, helping to consolidate `company’s reputation as a reference in the field of sustainability. In fact, data publication through GBIF is seen as very important within the CBD and has even been chosen as one of the Aichi Targets (Target 19) indicators of the Biodiversity Decade (2010-2020). Data published through GBIF also contributes to Aichi Targets 9 (invasive species), 11 (protected areas) and 12 (threatened species). Likewise, these data will be relevant also to the assessment of the SDG 14 (Life below water) and 15 (Life on Land).

By contributing to these objectives, company will also be improving its environmental and social profile by increasing the return on investment initially made to obtain these data. GBIF is very keen to use and disseminate new case studies, and data mobilization from the business sector is currently an important objective of the organization. This process could favourably contribute to the organization’s performance on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the assessment of the company in the framework of Equator Principles.

Another relevant advantage of this process would be to lay the foundations for improving the information management model collected in environmental impact assessment processes, as well as impact monitoring and compensatory measures. Collecting these data involves very costly studies, but where the added value of the information collected is often very scarce due to the inefficient way it is often managed later. Because of this, information is usually lost or difficult to access and therefore, does not contribute to internal learning processes or to the reuse of information collected through new investments or environmentally sustainable management of the infrastructures in operation.

Publishing data through GBIF in interconnection with a national GBIF Node, would provide motivation and additional tools for the management processes of this type of information, which would potentially be scalable for the company group at national and international levels.

In summary, according to the report Digitally Transforming Environmental Assessment, when private companies publish their biodiversity data, this will result in:

To date, GBIF includes more than 60,000 datasets on its portal published by more than 1,700 data publishing institutions. These publishers are mostly government agencies, natural history museums and herbaria, universities, research centres and non-governmental organizations of various kinds.

The almost complete absence of the business sector is noticeable, which limits access to a vast and important volume of biodiversity data collected by companies around the world. In total, private companies now publish at least 7,789,180 occurrence records, accounting for 0.3 per cent of all records published in GBIF.

Table 1 lists the most significant private sector publishers.

Companies that carry out environmental impact assessments, impact monitoring and compensatory measures studies, thereby collect species occurrence and abundance data, may publish them on GBIF.

A lot of these data are collected in regions that lack sampling efforts and are less known, or have groups of organisms that are underrepresented and would, therefore, be valuable to the scientific community and to organizations such as CBD, IPBES or GEO BON.

Even data from studies in better-known regions could be of high value as they allow information gaps to be filled and improve time series representations. Thus, all data collected by company as part of its operation could be published in GBIF, without injury to the need to protect intellectual property issues, or transitory or permanent confidentiality of the information.

If data includes sensitive information, such as the location of threatened, sensitive or economically valuable species, it is recommended to apply best practices for generalizing this information.

Thus, data collected by private companies can be published through GBIF in a relatively short period, if procedural aspects of publication are completed and the data format is adapted to GBIF standards (primarily Darwin Core). Also, the national node may be provided all technical helpdesk needed for the standardization process.

The decision to become a publisher of biodiversity data at GBIF would first come with a decision by the company management bodies. After that, it is necessary to complete a set of steps that are common to any institution applying for data publishing:

Depending on the size of the projects that originated the datasets, it is possible that the company’s biodiversity data was obtained by hiring other companies or organizations that carried out the sampling work. This is the most common situation in an EIA or monitoring study, where sampling services are subcontracted. Involvement of these contractors and field technicians who have observed or identified species in the data publishing process is desirable, whenever possible. These technicians can play a relevant role, notably in reviewing data and metadata, contributing to better description and quality of the dataset. On the other hand, it is equally important for them to be recognized and accredited for their work and to associate them with their records. Another way to associate them and their organizations with the dataset is by identifying the associated parties when preparing metadata. Also, they have to be included as co-authors of the dataset and recommended citation.

The proof of concept regarding data publication in GBIF could be developed involving the following steps:

Apart from the dedication time provided by company staff involved in preparing the proof of concept, there are no additional costs for the company. The necessary work may be supported by the GBIF National Node, that has the knowledge and infrastructure necessary to facilitate this publication. When the National Node makes its IPT facility available for hosting and publishing data, it is recommended that this service is framed by the Service Level Agreement between the GBIF Node (as a service provider) and the company (as the user of the service). This service also has no associated costs. In addition, the GBIF Node could provide training on data publishing through GBIF, contributing to the capacity of the company in the fields of biodiversity information management and data quality.