Biodiversity Data Use provides explanation of several “Basis of record” of record terms (see below) but GBIF data listings also include the categories Material sample, Observation, and Occurrence. What follows was copied from that page but has (in italics), in addition, some suggestions and addition…

Thanks for pointing this out. The definitions were provided before the introduction of material sample, which is why it is missing from the list. The course on biodiversity data use will be updated in the upcoming future so these comments are much appreciated. I am wondering why you have deleted th…

I added the phrase “including those obtained through remote sensing*” in the explanation which I thought covered telemetry and is the word that came to mind. I could be wrong about it. I was rereading the explanations (original and my version) again and another problem came to mind: the difference …

Apologies, my mistake , I misread the text for machine observation and your suggestion makes it clearer. With respect to your comment on the flora, in that instance the occurrences associated to the flora would be a Material citation. The specimens on which the flora were based would be published a…

I was thinking of a situation where, even though a statement is based on the observation of specimens, specimens are not cited. For example, the Flora of Somalia summarizes species distribution in terms of the administrative regions used when it was started but specimens are not cited for the region…

In this instance, the only evidence is recorded in literature, so this would be a material citation. Hope that is clearer now. Basis of record is quite a tricky term.

But it would be that, not a human observation. It is the human observation explanation that gave me pause. It, like material citation, references field notes. To me it would mean things like lists of species where one relies on someone’s id of something - which may be correct but for which there is …

Hi Mary, I have only been following this from afar, and may have missed some context. Just to say that, from the history of the BasisOfRecord term, the main intention of the term has been to allow a user of data to distinguish between in-situ (specimen, observation) and ex-situ data (botanical/zoolo…

Thank you, Andrea. Basically, I am thinking about how to clarify the meaning of the terms used by GBIF for someone being introduced to digitizing occurrence records. It is the part about being able clarify meaning to beginners that made me raise the question. Mary

Thank you, Mary, much appreciated! You probably are dealing with more diverse situations than I am picturing. There may be edge cases, where is it a bit hard to decide whether it is more this or more that. I was assuming that most situations are relatively clear, and that trying to cover every event…

So, reading this, for example, all the observations in the iNaturalist GBIF dataset are Human Observation. But, here this suggests that they should be Machine Observation. They have images from a machine that the observer used. Is that correct?

Understanding basis of record

Data Publishing

ahahn April 11, 2025, 11:07am 16

Understood, and an important piece of information. This part is not the “job” of the basisOfRecord field though. It will be documented through other parts of the record, like associated media.

Topic		Replies	Views
basisOfRecord for Plazi datasets Data Publishing	20	3060	October 30, 2020
Where are terms defined? Miscellaneous	2	259	January 12, 2024
Understanding basis of record - a living specimen becomes a preserved specimen - GBIF Data Blog Data blog	0	2103	September 18, 2019
Basis of Record: Ocurrence Miscellaneous	3	889	April 9, 2022
Finding a GBIF occurrence from a specimen code Miscellaneous	9	568	April 1, 2023

Understanding basis of record

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