Workshop: introduction to the publication of biodiversity data

Thursday, 17 August 2017

In partnership with the ABQ, Canadensys offered two workshops in May, for the professionals and organizations interested in publishing their data on Canadensys and GBIF.

This one day workshop has been divided in two parts.

Association des Biologistes du Québec (ABQ)

The Association des Biologistes du Québec (ABQ) is an association of more than 800 biologists in Québec. The mandate of the association is to support their members in the practice of their profession, helping and supporting them in biological issues and projects involving citizens and organizations. This non-profit organization recognize the different aspects of the profession of biologist and act as a professional network manager by organizing an annual conference, workshops and trainings all year long, by producing a journal and by representing their members to the provincial and local discussions.

1st part: Canadensys and the Biodiversity Informatics Network

The first part was focused on presenting Canadensys, GBIF and the biodiversity data publication standards . A presentation of the Canadensys publication and visualization tools was also planned, as well as a presentation of the tools we use to validate and clean datasets.

Most participants were ecologists, interested in publishing sampling-event data. An emphasis has thus been put in the explanation of how to publish this type of data as well as on the accompanying biotic and abiotic measures.

The PDF of the presentation is available here (french only).

2nd part: Let’s practice!

Each participant was invited to work on his own dataset, and to follow this list of steps:

• Create a resource on the Canadensys IPT and start to fill in the metadata.
• Use OpenRefine, R or Excel (not recommended) to prepare their dataset, validate the taxonomy and the georeferencement.
• Verify the DarwinCore terms used in the list of recommended terms, add terms when needed and verify the format and standardization of the dataset.
• If applicable, request the registration of their organization on GBIF.

In a one-day workshop, participants didn’t had the time to prepare and publish their dataset from A to Z. Thus, we continue to work with them and we hope to see more event-based datatets in the future on Canadensys!

No other workshop is planned for 2017, but don’t hesitate to contact us if you are interested in participating in this type of workshop in 2018.