What isGBIF?

GBIF -the Global Biodiversity Information Facility- is the largest
biodiversity data network in the world. As an international
open-data infrastructure, it allows anyone anywhere to access,share, and use information about our planet's species.

Through open-source tools, common
standards, and consistent licensing,
GBIF offers data-holding institutions aplatform for making their data freely
and openly available worldwide.

GBIF.org holds thousands of datasets andmore than 1.6 billion biodiversity records
that have been used in thousands ofpeer-reviewed publications, policy papers,
and specialized analysis. People andorganizations all around the world havecontributed and gained beneﬁts from theGBIF network.

Why sharebiodiversity
data?
Companies and institutions that publish through GBIF have joined thevast list of organizations that follow conservation and sustainable
use guidelines.
By sharing information about our planet's species,
they help to understand and assess biodiversity.
Their collaboration also optimizes environmental
management, promotes scientiﬁc research, andincreases social awareness.

All these actions, as an outcome of publishing data, play a vital role ininﬂuencing stakeholder investments for future projects, creating coordinatedactivities among private and public organizations, and promoting initiatives inthe sector.

Companies that publish data through GBIF can take advantage of it toimprove their Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and show their commitment
to addressing global biodiversity decline.

Beneﬁts ofsharing

There are numerous beneﬁts of publishing data, from environmental responsibility
to practical application. Companies promoting or conducting Environmental
Impact Assessments (EIAs) and biodiversity monitoring programs, for example,
can accrue both operational and reputational beneﬁts by sharing biodiversity data
through GBIF.

These are some of the advantages of sharing and reusing data:

Long-term cost savings.
Improved understanding, monitoring and action planning.
Access to standardized formats and conditions.
Collaborative development for better practices.
Reduced ﬁeld survey efforts and improved understanding and targeting of species (range).
Low-cost leadership opportunities for costs and negative impact reduction.
Transparency, accountability, and disclosure of assessments to stakeholders, regulators, and citizens.
Social license to operate.
Positive reputation proﬁle.
Fill gaps and improve data coverage in under-sampled regions and sensitive ecosystems.
Reuse of your data for decision-making and research.
Improvement in data management, documentation and retention in large and small projects.
Minimal additional cost to the process of biodiversity surveys and monitoring for EIAs.
Increased visibility.

Data types

Datasets provide valuable information on species that is essential forscientiﬁc research, decision-making and environmental management.
GBIF recognizes four types of datasets. Although it is possible topublish metadata only, most data is often published under checklist,
occurrence, and sampling-event datasets.

Checklists datasets allow publishing simple lists oftaxonomic species.

Occurrence data records allow tracking the presence ofspecies at a speciﬁc place and time and It can help to map
historical or current distribution. These data provide
geographic information, from general locality to speciﬁccoordinates, and may include multiple individuals of thesame species.
Sampling-event datasets provide the same
information as the occurrence data but also include
detailed information about the protocol used and therelative abundance of species recorded during thesampling event.

Data licensing

You can publish your data through GBIF using Creative Commons (CC)licensing, which allows you to share information for open access use. We
manage three different types of licenses: CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-NC.

We suggest using the CC0 waiver to make your data available for any use
and without restrictions, or the CC BY license to let others use your datathrough proper attribution.
Publishing under the CC BY-NC license will limit the scope and visibility of
the information you share via GBIF, as it may only be used for
non-commercial purposes.

How to publish
data?
1

Register

Register your company to join GBIF.

2

Adapt

Adapt your data to the Darwin Core
standard (DwC) and validate your datasets

3

ChooseAssign a Creative Commons license

7

View

You’ ll get a link to access yourpublished data.

6

PublishA DwC ﬁle will be automaticallygenerated. Contact GBIF to review
the process.

5
4CreateUse the GBIF Metadata Proﬁle to create
metadata. Upload it to the IPT.
UploadUse the Integrated Publishing Toolkit(IPT) to upload your datasets
CC BY-SA 4.0 · November 2020 · private-sector@gbif.org

SHARE BIODIVERSITY DATA THROUGH GBIF
An invitation to the private sector

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