|
|
Background
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (www.gbif.org) was created in March 2001 as an open, independent organization dedicated to making the world’s biodiversity data freely and universally available via the internet. Importantly, GBIF is open to participation by all countries, economic entities and organizations that can benefit by the open sharing of biodiversity information on a global scale. One of GBIF’s work programs, Digitisation of Natural History Collections (DIGIT), concentrates on facilitating the expansion of biodiversity knowledge by promoting the digitisation of legacy and newly acquired primary species occurrence data and the dynamic accessibility of the resulting data.
To date, DIGIT has provided USD 1.5 million in seed-money awards. These funds have generally targeted projects that could be rapidly implemented with a high probability of success. As a result, the data available through the GBIF data portal are spotty. However, it is important that we now develop a defined set of priorities for the seed money grants, using criteria for which there is a clear rationale.
A number of possible approaches to prioritization of the digitization effort could be taken. The 2002 DIGIT STAG (see DIGIT STAG Report) suggested that factors such as economic impact, active curators/quality of data, current level of digitization, availability of world checklists, potential for capacity building, potential for leveraging additional funding, potential for networking or leveraging other kinds of additional resources and cost per specimen all be considered in the prioritization exercise.
One of recommendations in the Report from GBIF's Third Year Review relating to the DIGIT work program was:
“GBIF should continue to work with all its members and with the systematics and broader scientific community to develop a well-justified policy for prioritizing data digitization based on agreed, relevant criteria."
In response to this review recommendation, and as a first step in working with the broader community to develop a unified and comprehensive plan for prioritizing the digitization of natural history collections, GBIF is holding an e-conference to discuss the targeting of the 2005-2006 DIGIT Seed Money grants to produce quality data sets that are rich enough and have enough geographic coverage to demonstrate to the scientific community, politicians and funding agencies the value of the global digitization effort.
The GBIF Third Year review suggested that the criteria could be based on the following questions:
- What key scientific questions could be answered if the data were digitized?
- What core conservation issues could be addressed?
- What is the economic and non-economic relevance or value of the various taxa and the legacy data about them? For example, data sets selected for digitization should be assessed on their value, not necessarily on their size.
- Are there particularly knowledgeable curators of certain high-value legacy data sets or collections that should be prioritized before the curators retire?
The developments of data sets with enough geographic scope to support many multi-national initiatives are often difficult for national or regional funding agencies to finance. From a global perspective it is clear that the GBIF seed money awards and their associated matching funds provide one mechanism to initiate the development of these types of data sets. As such, GBIF is well positioned to utilize it seed money awards to encourage consortia of institutions to develop and share data sets that would support international initiatives such as- The International Pollinators Initiative (IPI),
- The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC),
- The Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) and
- The Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010 Biodiversity Target.
However, due to the limited funding available, if the 2005-2006 DIGIT Seed money program hopes to produce quality data sets that are rich enough and have enough geographic coverage to demonstrate to the scientific community, politicians and funding agencies the value of the global digitization effort we are going to have to be extremely focused and will only be able to support digitization activities with a very limited taxonomic coverage and very specific goals. This does not mean that the taxonomic groups or the goals selected for this round of funding will be the same for future funding competitions. In fact, it is expected that the emphasis will change as the GBIF digitization prioritization plan is developed.
The DIGIT Science Sub-Committee, at its April 21-22, 2005 meeting in Brussels, considered possible criteria for the selection of the target taxonomic group and endorsed the following:
- The resulting digitized observational or specimen based data sets need to have a clear application in support of a major international conservation initiative.
- Digitization of these data increases the value of current GBIF data coverage by filling in taxonomic and geo-spatial gaps.
- The proposed taxonomic group should meet as many as possible of the following criteria:
- Is well represented in a large number of collections or observational data sets
- Has a broad global range
- Is of significant economic importance
- Is of significant conservation concern
- Accessible digitized specimen information is urgently needed to answer specific scientific and taxonomic questions
|
