This is a DRAFT – please send us your comments and suggestions.
Different researchers and institutions capture and store data in the forms and combinations which best meet their needs. However, in order to make these data more widely accessible and to ensure that they can be reused for different purposes, data providers need to consider the appropriate way to need to expose their data, using structures and terms which can be recognised by others. Once these decisions have been made, they need to ensure that their data are transformed (or “mapped”) into these standard forms, and that the data set is associated with a good description and additional information on the source and ownership of the data, again in a form which can be understood by other users.
Sharing data therefore depends on the consistent use of agreed standards. Many different standards exist for different purposes. This document identifies the standards which are being adopted by the Atlas of Living Australia and seeks to explain how they can be used to improve the reuse of Australian biodiversity data.
TDWG produces an annual Technical Roadmap which provides recommendations for best practices in data sharing between biodiversity informatics projects. This document seeks to reflect these recommendations. The Technical Roadmap is available – PDF (106KB).
The ALA aims to bring together data from many sources. To do this it will support a range of different data standards, many of which are already in use by various communities around Australia. The ALA aims to shield users from this complexity by providing services which handle these source data formats and offer consistent views of merged data.
The ALA will therefore respond to developing needs and requirements by continuing to identify and support relevant data standards. This page provides a snapshot of the range of standards which are already recognised as important. Additional information will be added as it becomes available.
The information on this page has been divided into three major topics, each with a number of sub-topics:
The term, “metadata”, refers to the information a data provider supplies to describe a data set and to help users to access it. This may include descriptions of the contents of the data set, how the data were collected, information about the collectors and owners of the data and the uses they approve for the data, and technical details required to access or interpret the data.
As a quick shorthand – when considering the task of sharing data – the specific data standards address the question of what information can be shared, the protocols address the question of how the information is to be shared and accessed, and the metadata standards address the question of why users should be interested in accessing the information. (This is an oversimplification, but may help to explain the significance of the following sections.)
The section on protocols includes some information on software packages which implement these standards.
Please consider the question of copyright and usage restrictions when making data available. The ALA has developed some draft guidelines on the subject and recommends the adoption of Creative Commons licences in most situations.
Since the ALA deals with biodiversity data, the expectation is that all data items will include a label or data element identifying the species or other taxon covered by the resource. Where feasible data providers are encouraged to use scientific names found in the AFD or the APC or the Catalogue of Life (particularly for any taxa not found in AFD/APC). However it is recognised that some data sets (particularly historical collections and literature) use names which may not be currently accepted species names. In such situations data providers are advised to use the scientific names found in the original sources. The ALA will develop or use Taxonomic Services to attempt to map such data appropriately to current species concepts.
Over the coming months, this document will be enhanced with examples for each of the standards identified.
