Data exchange standards, protocols and formats relevant for the collection data domain within the GFBio network

The Natural History Collections and Culture Collection BGBM, DSMZ, MfN, SGN, SMNS, SNSB, ZFMK with their evolving GFBio Collection Data Centers/ Data Archives are partners of several national and international initiatives and projects developing and using data exchange protocols and standards. During the first months of the GFBio project the partners collected and evaluated relevant technical documentations of existing domain-specific data exchange formats, interfaces and protocols with relevance for the interaction and harmonization between collection management systems and archive infrastructure as a whole (see table below). This table deals with collection standards, but it was decided to include SDD, EML and GML as well, as they are used and closely connected to the work within GFBio Collection Data Centers/ Data Archives.

This documentation is part of the process to identify existing and to install and integrate new data exchange mechanisms and protocols appropriate for the GFBio network. It provides useful information for software developers and data scientists to set up and run GFBio agreed standard exchange software solutions at the GFBio Collection Data Centers.

Table: Data exchange standards, protocols and formats relevant for the collection data domain within the GFBio network
Note: Cells highlighted in grey indicate exchange standards and protocols currentlx directiy or indirectly in use by the GFBio Collection Data Centers/ Archives.

Explanations:

Data Domain (values): Collection Archives; Biodiversity Literature; Literature; Geography; General

Standard/ Protocol Category (values): Data Exchange Standard (Def.: standard schema describing semantic of data elements and in some cases also the syntaxxml, RDF, CSV); Data Exchange Protocol (Def.: rule of communication describing the format of data exchange. It uses existing standard schemas); Metadata Standard (Def.: standard schema describing the overall content of a whole data set)

Status: status in standardization, e.g. accepted, under review, proposed, none, draft, published, out-dated; standardization body

GFBio Collection Data Centers/ Data Archives – Expertise: standards and protocols in use by GFBio Collection Data Centers; directly or (indirectly)