Within published papers lies a wealth of species occurrences [1].
“scientists around the world have been searching for other
long-term data sets, data from forgotten studies languishing
unpublished in notebooks or old Excel files.” Goulson, 2021
Extraction of data from such papers is a laborious business. Spreadsheets which emulate relational databases offer one feasible route: crosslinked sheets for Sources, Locations, Events & Occurrences [2] plus a taxonomic lookup table ease this task [3].
All fields conforming to DwC standards of course.
The end result will be a .csv file fit for use. Well not quite, whilst that format is perfect for a bit of GIS biogeography [4], the standard requires one more step if the data is to be uploaded to GBIF via one’s GBIF Node [5].
Converters from .csv to DwC format are presumably available but I’ve never found one, can anyone point me to the simplest effective utility?
References:
[1] Example https://www.gbif.org/publisher/1d7ce54a-cdac-46a3-8279-f41a4a936776 - 1 down, 55 to go. Authors to this day still list occurrences as text only.
[2] Used for several UK projects Dipterists Forum and documented in Bulletin 92 https://dipterists.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/DF%20Bulletin%2092%20Autumn%202021.pdf - for use in projects
[3] UKSI plus GBIF references for other European species
[4] Flickr collection with European distribution maps Collection: Micropezids
[5] NBN, staff changes mean I’d like to make their task easier