Data Sharing Principles and Legal Interoperability for Essential Biodiversity Variables

The ambitious goal to monitor biodiversity globally is a huge challenge and requires innovative solutions. Essential Biodiversity Variables are an approach chosen by GEO BON to measure changes of biodiversity a global scale. 

GLOBIS-B is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project to bring together scientists with global research infrastructure operators and legal interoperability experts to address the research needs and infrastructure services required to calculate Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs).

Besides the many technical challenges of sharing data at global scale, legal issues of data sharing play a decisive role. The lightning talk by the Plazi members Willi Egloff and Donat Agosti presented at the GLOBIS-B workshop in Leipzig (February 29, 2016)  provides an overview of the legal issues and how they are addressed in related initiatives GEOSS, EU BON and RDA/CODATA. They conclude with the following proposed principles:

• Essential Biodiversity Variables should be shared as Open Data, making them available as part of Data-CORE without charge or restrictions on reuse
• Exceptions should be limited to sensitive data: Data whose free accessibility could endanger certain aspects of biodiversity conservation; Data that are qualified as confidential by the competent authority
• Right holder(s) of research data (if any) should dedicate them to the public domain (bei CC0-waiver, CC-BY-License or any similar instrument)
• Data, products and metadata should be made available with minimum time delay

The lecture is available here. To follow up the meeting on Twitter use #globisbw1.