Measuring the mobilisation, use and impact of national biodiversity data
by Mélianie Raymond and Kyle Copas, GBIF Secretariat
During GBIF’s 2014 governing board meeting, network participants voiced interest in receiving regular updates on the mobilisation, use and impact of data served through GBIF.org at a country level.
The proposed reports serve several overlapping purposes, including:
- Tracking progress toward national-level commitments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Targets
- Providing regular at-a-glance communication with national stakeholders
- Highlighting the network’s value to countries not yet participating in GBIF
After soliciting feedback on an initial prototype created in the spring, the GBIF Secretariat has produced initial versions of the reports for all countries, islands and territories for the 12-month period ending 30 June 2015. Introduced at GBIF’s annual governing board meeting in October, this ‘review draft’ of the reports will enable national participants to conduct a final check of its content before the updated year-end versions are released early in 2016.
Key design considerations included support for an automated six-month production cycle for print-ready reports and an emphasis on visual display over text to simplify the process of translating reports into local languages.
The opening page of the eight-page PDF functions as a dashboard that showcases high-level aspects of the report. Each of the subsequent two-page spreads focuses on a broad theme: access and usage (peer-reviewed articles, data downloads and web traffic), data availability (total amounts, annual percentage changes and quality trends) and data mobilization (national publishing trends and ‘data repatriation’, or sharing with other countries of origin).
With the infrastructure now in place to produce deliver fresh updates in January and July 2016, the Secretariat will look to gather input on future refinements and extensions to the report. Please send your comments and suggestions to nationalreports@gbif.org.