The value of data imprisoned in biodiversity literature seen through data portals and dashboards

Natural History Institutions (NHIs), such as research institutions, herbaria, botanical gardens, and museums, have traditionally and continuously contributed to the understanding of the natural world and to the dissemination of this knowledge. Their core mission can be divided into three main objectives: (1) to establish and maintain biological collections (carried out by herbaria, zoological archives, etc.); (2) to conduct scientific research associated with the collections; and (3) to disseminate scientific knowledge within the scientific community and to the general public.

To assess their impact, national research institutes traditionally rely on indicators based on their researchers' publications and the number of times these have been cited. However, these indicators are outdated. Since the shift to open access and the global consensus in favor of improving the research evaluation process beyond the impact factor of journals, most institutions have signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Over the past decade, academic publishing in taxonomy, based on material preserved in natural history collections, has undergone many significant transformations to ensure that the information contained in publications is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). The adoption of semantic markup and the assignment of persistent identifiers to content allow comprehensive citations of the article, including elements therein, such as images, taxonomic treatments, and material citations.

The data provided allow more in-depth analyses and visualization of the contribution of collections, authors, or specimens to taxonomic output and third parties, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, for reuse of the data or building the catalogue of life.

In this presentation, the authors will showcase dashboards and GBIF-hosted portals that allow visualization of the data provided by publications, from names (authors and their affiliations, collectors, taxon names, etc.) as a reference system, to collection locations (where the specimen was collected, where it is deposited, etc.), and collection tracking (which group is covered, what are the gap in the collection…). In a second part, the presentation will explore how the data can be used to create more relevant indicators to measure scientific impact, while enabling NHIs to set up a collective strategy for research assessment.