ICIMOD is an associate member of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and HKHBIF is the GBIF-mediated publishing platform that is hosted by ICIMOD. It is a regional node of GBIF that caters to ICIMOD’s eight regional member countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The aim is to sensitize biodiversity data holders on the importance of biodiversity data publishing globally, build a network of data holders and publishers from the region, and motivate them to contribute to building biodiversity data for the HKH.

HKHBIF strategies

• Increase awareness of the importance of biodiversity information in the HKH region.
• Communicate the importance of global publishing of biodiversity data and information to the public and decision makers.
• Strengthen the HKHBIF organizational presence and its network of data holders and publishers from the HKH.
• Seek out partnerships with other Asian regional nodes
• Highlight biodiversity information from the HKH member countries.

Step 1: Download appropriate excel template (checklist, occurrence, sampling data) from GBIF

Step 2: Fill in data and metadata sheet as suggested

Step 3: Send the completed excel sheet to HKHBIF@icimod.org for validation and publishing

Step 4: Once published a link with citation and DOI will be sent to the data publisher

Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core maintenance group. It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions. Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.
Darwin core quick reference guide: https://dwc.tdwg.org/terms/