Research Infrastructure Contact Zones

The landscape of biodiversity data infrastructures and organisations is complex and fragmented. Many occupy specialised niches representing narrow segments of the multidimensional biodiversity informatics space, while others operate across a broad front but differ from others by data type(s) handled, their geographic scope and the life cycle phase(s) of the data they support. To characterise the various dimensions of the biodiversity informatics landscape, we developed a framework to survey these dimensions for ten organisations (DiSSCo, GBIF, iBOL, Catalogue of Life, iNaturalist, Biodiversity Heritage Library, GeoCASe, LifeWatch, eLTER, ELIXIR), relative to both their current activities and long-term strategic ambitions. The results of the survey are presented in this dataset. Details of the assessment methodology, data model, scope and high-level results are described in an accompanying paper, which is currently under review and will be linked to this dataset on publication.