We’re Happy to Help

Welcome to VertNet. We invite any institution, collection, laboratory, NGO, and educational facility with biological or natural history collections to join the biodiverity data-sharing community. We work with ALL biodiversity data from every region on Earth - vertebrates, non-vertebrates, fossils, plants, insects, fungi, and more - and we can help you to share your data with VertNet, GBIF, iDigBio, and many other biodiversity data resources.

If you are ready to share, contact us and we’ll get you started.

What You Need

1. Digitized biological or natural history data (we work with all biodiversity collections, not just vertebrates);
2. The desire to share your data with scientists, researchers, educators, and others around the world; and,
3. A willingness to maintain and improve your data over time.
4. A sense of humor is a welcome bonus, but not required!
   

If you have the first three, or if you have questions, please contact the VertNet team and we’ll get you and your data started on the path to discovery.

Who Can Share?

Any institution, collection, laboratory, NGO, and educational facility with biodiversity data.

Historically, our emphasis has been vertebrate data, but we have many years of experience with data that describe ALL biodiversity. We believe strongly in the benefits to having biodiversity data available and discoverable online, so we will continue to work with vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, fungi, paleo, and any other biological or natural history collection interested to share their data with the world.

How It Works

1. The process begins When you are ready to share your data. All you have to do is let us know. Once you’ve done that we’ll work with you to improve and publish your data in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
2. We believe in publishing the highest quality and most complete data possible. After we talk with you about your data, we’ll review your data for possible data improvements, such as duplicate catalog numbers, indeterminate and non-standard geography, inconsistent taxonomy, and terms not compliant with Darwin Core. Then we’ll provide you with a detailed report so that you can update your database locally. Collections who host their data on the VertNet IPT (it’s free!) benefit from these services automatically. If you host your own data set, you can request this service to make your data more complete.
3. As soon as you are happy with the quality of your data set, we use the Integrated Publishing Toolkit to map your data to Darwin Core and to create an archive of your occurrence data and institutional metadata. We then publish your data and make it available for use by VertNet, GBIF, iDigBio, and other data aggregators (with your permission). To learn more about this process, you can read our IPT FAQ, Guide to Copyright and Licensing, or you can contact us directly.