GBIF REPORT ON EXPERIENCES OF DATA SHARING WITH COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN

GBIF is glad to announce the results of a study it commissioned to address the manner in which important institutions (mostly in Europe and North America) that hold vast quantities of specimens from around the world and their counterparts in various developing countries have dealt with sharing specimen-level information from biodiversity rich parts of the world. The report is available for download from the link provided here.

A total of 18 institutions actively collaborated in this study. These institutions include important herbaria and natural history museums that curate specimens from practically the entire planet. The reported initiatives dealt with digitization of data, training, and the formulation of formal and non-formal agreements to share data.

Several aspects of data sharing are analysed in the present study, including priority criteria for selecting country of origin and type of data to be shared, exchange formats, contractual arrangements, intellectual property rights, funding, costs, benefits accrued, and how barriers were overcome, and finally conclusions and recommendations.

The study was developed for GBIF by the Reference Center on Environmental Information (CRIA) and was prepared by Dora Canhos, Arthur Chapman and Vanderlei Canhos.