Biodiversity Databases in Russia: Towards a National Portal

Russia holds massive biodiversity data accumulated in botanical and zoological collections, literature publications, annual reports of natural reserves, nature conservation and monitoring study project reports. While some data has been digitized and organized in databases or spreadsheets, most of the biodiversity data in Russian remains dormant and digitally inaccessible. Concepts of open research data is spreading, the lack of data publishing tradition and of use of data standards remain prominent. The majority of Russian biodiversity databases does not have web interfaces, and are accessible only to a limited numbers of researchers. A few information systems have interactive maps with the species occurrence data and systems allowing registered users to upload data. Despite the complexity and size of the biodiversity data landscape in Russia, the interest in publishing data through international biodiversity portals is increasing among Russian researchers. Since 2014, institutional data publishers in Russia have published about 130 000 species occurrences through GBIF.org. The increase in data publishing activity calls for creation a GBIF node in Russia, aiming to support Russian biodiversity experts in international data work.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author