New article offers historical overview of the organization, the infrastructure, its services and the global community underpinning it
Celebrating 25 years of GBIF, a new article published in Biodiversity Data Journal offers a historical overview from GBIF’s inception to its current status as an essential biodiversity data network and platform. Led by GBIF Executive Secretary, Joe Miller, and written up by Caitlin Mandeville from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the paper covers GBIF’s services, infrastructure and community, and how these have evolved since 2001.
The publication of the GBIF overview article coincides with the 33rd meeting of GBIF Governing Board in Oslo, Norway, at which the anniversary will be celebrated at a public symposium, hosted and organized by the University of Oslo Natural History Museum and GBIF Norway.
A growing global network
GBIF’s work is carried out through a distributed network of 70 country participants and 42 organizational participants, each represented by a national or thematic node that mobilizes data, builds local capacity and connects biodiversity communities to GBIF’s infrastructure. More than 2,700 institutions, including museums, universities, government agencies, citizen science platforms and a growing number of private-sector organizations, have published data through the network, with new publishers joining at a rate of more than four per week.