Blair Jarrett, Gwiazdowski Rodger, Borrelli Andrew, Hotchkiss Michelle, Park Candace, Perrett Gleannan, Hanner Robert
University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada University of Guelph Guelph Canada.
University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States of America University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA United States of America.
Biodivers Data J. 2020 Mar 27;8:e32765. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.8.e32765. eCollection 2020.
Biodiversity informatics depends on digital access to credible information about species. Many online resources host species' data, but the lack of categorisation for these resources inhibits the growth of this entire field. To explore possible solutions, we examined the (now retired) Biodiversity Information Projects of the World (BIPW) dataset created by the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG); this project, which ran from 2007-2015 (officially removed from the TDWG website in 2018) was an attempt at organising the Web's biodiversity databases into an indexed list. To do this, we applied a simple classification scheme to score databases within BIPW based on nine data categories, to characterise trends and current compositions of this biodiversity e-infrastructure. Primarily, we found that of 600 databases investigated from BIPW, only 315 (~53%) were accessible at the time of this writing, underscoring the precarious nature of the biodiversity information landscape. Many of these databases are still available, but suffer accessibility issues such as link rot, thus putting the information they contain in danger of being lost. We propose that a community-driven database of biodiversity databases with an accompanying ontology could facilitate efficient discovery of relevant biodiversity databases and support smaller databases - which have the greatest risk of being lost.
生物多样性信息学依赖于对有关物种的可靠信息的数字访问。许多在线资源都存储着物种数据，但这些资源缺乏分类，这阻碍了整个领域的发展。为了探索可能的解决方案，我们研究了由生物多样性信息标准（TDWG）创建的（现已停用的）世界生物多样性信息项目（BIPW）数据集；该项目从2007年持续到2015年（2018年正式从TDWG网站上移除），旨在将网络上的生物多样性数据库整理成一个索引列表。为此，我们应用了一个简单的分类方案，根据九个数据类别对BIPW中的数据库进行评分，以描述这种生物多样性电子基础设施的趋势和当前构成。主要地，我们发现，在从BIPW调查的600个数据库中，在撰写本文时只有315个（约53%）可以访问，这突出了生物多样性信息格局的不稳定性质。这些数据库中的许多仍然可用，但存在诸如链接失效等可访问性问题，从而使它们所包含的信息有丢失的危险。我们建议，一个由社区驱动的生物多样性数据库及其配套的本体论可以促进对相关生物多样性数据库的高效发现，并支持那些面临最大丢失风险的较小数据库。
