Background
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) arose from a recommendation in 1999 by the Biodiversity Informatics Subgroup of the Megascience Forum, set up by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The panel's report concluded: “An international mechanism is needed to make biodiversity data and information accessible worldwide.” It argued that such a mechanism would produce many economic and social benefits, enabling sustainable development through provision of sound scientific information.
Specifically, the OECD panel recommended the establishment of a Global Biodiversity Information Facility, to “enable users to navigate and put to use vast quantities of biodiversity information, advancing scientific research … serving the economic and quality-of-life interests of society, and providing a basis from which our knowledge of the natural world can grow rapidly and in a manner that avoids duplication of effort and expenditure.”
That recommendation was endorsed by OECD science ministers and in 2001, GBIF was officially established through a Memorandum of Understanding between participating governments. In 2004 a prototype data portal was launched and this was followed in 2007 with the launch of the global data portal. Most recently, in 2013 a new combined data and communication portal launched with major enhancements including unlimited data downloads and real-time indexing of published datasets.
The NBN role in GBIF
In Autumn 2003 the NBN took on a global role as the UK node for GBIF and in September 2004 the NBN Gateway began to make data available through the portal, meaning that the NBN would be able to play its part on the international stage.
When the global data portal was released in 2007, the NBN supplied data which was publicly available to download from the NBN Gateway to GBIF. This amounted to approximately 15 million records out of the 27 million that were then available on the NBN Gateway. Today, GBIF maintains an index of 478 datasets published through the NBN, with a total of 37.7 million records, all of which are georeferenced.
The NBN is still one of the largest nodes in GBIF and provides the portal with the majority of wildlife observations from the UK. In total, GBIF hosts almost 450 million occurrence records and this is growing rapidly.
One of the major benefits of NBN participation in GBIF has always been that UK records can be seen alongside data from other countries, putting them into a broader geographical context. In addition, GBIF serves as a valuable forum for discussing issues concerning biodiversity data exchange with colleagues from around the world. GBIF also develops computer software that is freely available to everyone. Indeed the NBN used the GBIF data testing framework as the basis for its data validation software, NBN Record Cleaner.
As well as acting as an important data node, the NBN has also contributed to GBIF in other ways. For example, NBN Trust staff helped with the development of guidance for dealing with potentially sensitive records and the NBN technical team, alongside colleagues from other countries, worked closely with GBIF on both the design and testing of the portal.
As well as the records made available through GBIF, the NBN Gateway is also used in a European context to deliver Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) compliant data. The INSPIRE Directive aims to make it easier to access and combine environmental spatial datasets held by public authorities, to support environmental policy and practice at a national and international level. It recommends the publication of species data via the NBN Gateway as a sustainable and cost-effective way of complying with the INSPIRE Regulations on Annex III species data.
Current status
GBIF was given a copy of only publicly downloadable data from NBN Gateway 4 prior to July 2013 and before the switch over to the new version of the NBN Gateway (version 5) in October 2013. Records flagged as sensitive were also removed from the data given to GBIF. This was before access control changes with the release of NBN Gateway 5, when data providers had to explicitly state that the data would be downloadable. At this time, GBIF Terms & Conditions were nearly identical to those of the NBN Gateway. GBIF now allows download of data without logging which is an issue for some UK data providers. One of the workarounds that the NBN Trust agreed during the access controls consultation in 2012-13 was to ensure that all downloads would be logged in return for removing the ‘view only’ control. No further data has been supplied to GBIF whilst we tackle the complex issues around this functionality.
The future
GBIF recently carried out a consultation focusing on “Licensing of Data within GBIF”. The NBN Trust prepared a draft response and consulted Network members on its content. Many thanks to the more than 40 people and organisations that responded to this consultation.
GBIF aims to clarify and simplify data publishing licenses to encourage data use. The NBN Trust believes that a move to more openness would be beneficial for biodiversity in the UK in terms of research, conservation and education and has been supportive of GBIFs approach, subject to some amendments.
In its submission the NBN Trust recognised the considerable effort of data collectors, curators and publishers in creating and maintaining biological data collection. The Trust does not want to see this effort undermined. As a result it was recommended that the preferred licence would be a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) whereby the creator must be appropriately credited, but re-distribution and re-use is not restricted.
Use of data under this license would include commercial use. The NBN Trust is aware that this may not be appropriate for some datasets, and therefore it has been proposed that datasets can be flagged as restricted from commercial use when necessary. This would also enable those who do not need to comply with INSPIRE, and those who would prefer not to share their data with GBIF to opt out of publishing data to the GBIF portal if they wish. The NBN Trust also supported GBIF’s proposal to establish a citation model built upon the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system enabling efficient citation of datasets and will be working to establish a similar system within the NBN Gateway.
The NBN Trust is starting to review the NBN Gateway Terms and Conditions, and to help with this we are planning workshops on days either side of the annual conference in November. These workshops will be used to discuss future data models for the UK including the extent to which open sharing will be a core principle. We will bring you more information on the workshops in the next month or so and will be consulting widely throughout this period to ensure that any changes are supported by the Network.