Collaborative Databasing Should Be Encouraged

Over the past two decades, the amount of data in global biodiversity databases has increased, and web databases are changing into one of the cornerstones of biodiversity research. Costello et al. set an important milestone in the development of global biodiversity databases: they identified and described a sustainable model for future databasing using the World Register of Marine Species (WORMS) as an example [ 1 Costello M.J. et al. Sustainable biodiversity databasing: international, collaborative, dynamic, centralised. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2018; 33 : 803-805 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar ]. Biodiversity databases rely heavily on experts who enter the data, follow the taxonomic changes, and update the databases [ 1 Costello M.J. et al. Sustainable biodiversity databasing: international, collaborative, dynamic, centralised. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2018; 33 : 803-805 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar ]. The major bottleneck to the growth of biodiversity web infrastructure is the time that taxonomy experts can allocate to database curation [ 1 Costello M.J. et al. Sustainable biodiversity databasing: international, collaborative, dynamic, centralised. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2018; 33 : 803-805 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar ]. The sustainable solutions saving experts’ time and enhancing the compatibility of different databases include collaborative work between the taxonomy experts, database centralization, and data sharing between the databases [ 1 Costello M.J. et al. Sustainable biodiversity databasing: international, collaborative, dynamic, centralised. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2018; 33 : 803-805 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar ]. However, any milestone is an opportunity to consider what challenges may arise in the future and how they could be alleviated