This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae070. This is version 1 of this Preprint.
Going Global by Going Local: Impacts and Opportunities of Geographically Focused Data Integration
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Authors
Malgorzata Lagisz 
,
Martin Westgate,
Dax Kellie,
Shinichi Nakagawa
Abstract
Biodiversity conservation is a global challenge that requires the integration of global and local data. Expanding global data infrastructures have opened unprecedented opportunities for biodiversity data storage, curation, and dissemination. Within one such infrastructure – the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) – these benefits are achieved by aggregating data from over 100 regional infrastructure ‘nodes’. GBIF nodes play a critical role by building and maintaining collaborations that support data sharing and reuse, while also fostering local research, traditional knowledge, innovation, and engagement. Therefore, regional-scale biodiversity infrastructures benefit scientific communities in ways that exceed their core function of contributing to global data aggregation; yet these additional scientific impacts are rarely quantified. To fill this gap, we characterise the scientific impact of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), one of the oldest and largest GBIF nodes, as a case study of a regional biodiversity information facility. Our discussion reveals the multi-faceted impact of the regional biodiversity data infrastructure. We showcase the global importance of such infrastructures, datasets, and collaborations.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2FP76
Subjects
Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Keywords
Bibliometrics, data infrastructures, global impact, information dissemination, meta-research
Dates
Published: 2025-06-17 00:18
Last Updated: 2025-06-17 00:18
License
CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
This work has been funded by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) / Commonwealth Government Contract (RG213588). MW and DK are employees of the Atlas of Living Australia.
Data and Code Availability Statement:
The study analysis was based on a collated outputs dataset provided by the Atlas of Living Australia. Additional information was fetched from online databases or downloaded from websites, as outlined in the Methods section. The data sets and code supporting the results of this article are available on the GitHub (https://github.com/mlagisz/ALA_research_weaving) and archived in Zenodo repository (https://zenodo.org/record/8024192; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8024191
Language:
English
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