Title |
Location, location, location: utilizing pipelines and services to more effectively georeference the world's biodiversity data
|
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Published in |
BMC Bioinformatics, November 2009
|
DOI | 10.1186/1471-2105-10-s14-s3 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Andrew W Hill, Robert Guralnick, Paul Flemons, Reed Beaman, John Wieczorek, Ajay Ranipeta, Vishwas Chavan, David Remsen |
Abstract |
Increasing the quantity and quality of data is a key goal of biodiversity informatics, leading to increased fitness for use in scientific research and beyond. This goal is impeded by a legacy of geographic locality descriptions associated with biodiversity records that are often heterogeneous and not in a map-ready format. The biodiversity informatics community has developed best practices and tools that provide the means to do retrospective georeferencing (e.g., the BioGeomancer toolkit), a process that converts heterogeneous descriptions into geographic coordinates and a measurement of spatial uncertainty. Even with these methods and tools, data publishers are faced with the immensely time-consuming task of vetting georeferenced localities. Furthermore, it is likely that overlap in georeferencing effort is occurring across data publishers. Solutions are needed that help publishers more effectively georeference their records, verify their quality, and eliminate the duplication of effort across publishers. |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 12 | 8% |
Germany | 6 | 4% |
Brazil | 4 | 3% |
United Kingdom | 3 | 2% |
Switzerland | 1 | <1% |
Australia | 1 | <1% |
South Africa | 1 | <1% |
Sweden | 1 | <1% |
Colombia | 1 | <1% |
Other | 4 | 3% |
Unknown | 116 | 77% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Researcher | 37 | 25% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 35 | 23% |
Student > Master | 15 | 10% |
Other | 14 | 9% |
Student > Bachelor | 8 | 5% |
Other | 31 | 21% |
Unknown | 10 | 7% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 79 | 53% |
Environmental Science | 21 | 14% |
Computer Science | 16 | 11% |
Social Sciences | 5 | 3% |
Engineering | 4 | 3% |
Other | 14 | 9% |
Unknown | 11 | 7% |