Technical collaboration and capacity building activities to support shared objectives and ensure free and open access to comprehensive information about life in and around the world’s oceans

Two global data networks have agreed to a joint strategy and action plan that will deepen their collaboration, improve the flows and services of high-quality data about marine and coastal biodiversity, and support research and decision-making on the world’s oceans.

Leveraging their 2020 collaboration agreement, OBIS—the Ocean Biodiversity Information System and GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—will focus on wider technical collaboration and shared capacity-building activities. The combined actions will extend and deepen the partnership by increasing cross-network cooperation while maintaining both communities’ identities and reinforcing their capacity to fulfil their respective mandates.

The focus on marine biodiversity includes data for all taxa listed in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), which provides a comprehensive, authoritative list of names of marine organisms along with information on synonyms. The plan aims to increase the availability of additional data for these taxa through OBIS.org, GBIF.org and their associated services.

The history of collaboration between OBIS and GBIF extends to the adoption and refinement of common tools, such as GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit, and the use of interoperable standards like Darwin Core. More recently, the two networks have worked together to incorporate new streams of eDNA-based data, prompting the addition of new co-authored guidance on how to publish DNA-derived data on marine life to their platforms.

To learn more about the strategy and action plan, what it means and how to get involved: Watch the recording of the webinar