The Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) Schema is an evolving comprehensive standard for the access to and exchange of data about specimens and observations (a.k.a. primary biodiversity data). The ABCD Schema attempts to be comprehensive and highly structured, supporting data from a wide variety of databases. It is compatible with several existing data standards. Parallel structures exist so that either (or both) atomised data and free-text can be accommodated.
The ABCD Schema was ratified as a standard by the Biodiversity Information Standards Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) in 2005. It was developed as a community-driven effort, with contributions from CODATA, BioCASE and GBIF among other organizations.
A body of standards, including a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity by providing reference definitions, examples, and commentaries.
Sponsored by Biodiversity Information Standards (TWDG), the current standard was last modified in October 2009.
Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is a metadata specification particularly developed for the ecology discipline. It is based on prior work done by the Ecological Society of America and associated efforts (Michener et al., 1997, Ecological Applications).
Sponsored by ecoinformatics.org, EML Version 2.2.0 was released in 2019.
A metadata standard for describing environmental monitoring activities, programmes, networks and facilities published by the UK Environmental Observation Framework (UKEOF).
Established by a global network of countries and organizations, GBIF is a web portal promoting and facilitating the mobilization, access, discovery and use of biodiversity data. The portal uses a profile of EML; a How-to Guide and Reference Guide for using the profile are available.
A web application that offers data publishers wishing to serve to the GBIF network an easy interface for describing data elements as basic text files, composing an appropriate XML Darwin Core descriptor file to accompany them.
A tool to validate XML metadata against the Darwin Core Text Guidelines.
A software platform using Darwin Core and EML to facilitate the efficient publishing of biodiversity data on the Internet, using the GBIF network.
An application for accessing and manipulating metadata and data (both locally and on the network), with wizards creating metadata files using a subset of Ecological Metadata Language (EML).
The UKEOF Catalogue contains over 2000 metadata records of environmental observations undertaken and funded by public and third sector organisations.
The Catalogue provides a unique management tool to underpin the activities and requirements of the environmental observation community. It provides a strong basis for strategic planning, giving a holistic overview of environmental observations as well as a place to discover who is doing what, where, why and when.
An aggregation of information on all the known species in Australia, collected from museums, herbaria, community groups, government departments, individuals and universities. All data is converted to Darwin Core.
The BioCASE Biological Unit Network provides access to a transnational network of biological collections; its protocol requires providers to use the ABCD schema in their configuration files.
A repository hosting computational models of biological systems, using the MIBBI-registered MIRIAM and MIASE minimal metadata requirements.
The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) is a Natural Environment Research Council Data Centre hosted by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). It manages nationally-important datasets concerned with the terrestrial and freshwater sciences.
Established by a global network of countries and organizations, GBIF is a web portal promoting and facilitating the mobilization, access, discovery and use of biodiversity data. The preferred format for publishing data to the GBIF network is the Darwin Core Archive, and its Integrated Publishing Toolkit uses EML as its data standard.
A network of federated institutions that have agreed to share data and metadata using a common framework, principally revolving around the use of the Ecological Metadata Language as a common language for describing ecological data.
A network providing the scientific expertise, research platforms, and long-term datasets necessary to document and analyze environmental change, it uses the Ecological Metadata Language in describing its data.
An EML developer, this US-based centre of cross-disciplinary research uses existing data to address major fundamental issues in ecology and allied fields.
A web portal using Darwin Core to describe biodiversity data collected in Madagascar.
Four distributed database networks (MaNIS, HerpNET, ORNIS and FishNet) using a Darwin Core engine to make bioinformatics specimen data interoperable, mappable and publicly available.