GGBN Data Standard

The stable version 1 (v1) of the GGBN Data Standard has been released on 04. October 2016.

Citation: Droege et al. (2016): The Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Standard Specification. DATABASE. doi: 10.1093/database/baw125

Note: Ongoing discussions and updates of the GGBN Data Standard will be documented at http://terms.tdwg.org/GGBN_Data_Standard

The GGBN Data Standard is intended to be used with ABCD or Darwin Core and is not a stand-alone solution! Implementations are available for both ABCD and DarwinCore-Archive. For ABCD two implementations have been made. One for single species samples ABCDGGBN and one for environmental samples ABCDGGBN-Enviro.

A new stable version of the standard will be released earliest at the end of 2019.

The GGBN Data Standard is a set of terms and controlled vocabularies designed to represent sample facts. It does not cover e.g., scientific name, geography, or physiological facts. This allows combining the GGBN Data Standard with other complementary standards, such as DwC, ABCD or MIxS. Potentially, the standard can be used not only for non-human genomic samples but also human samples. It builds upon existing standards commonly used within the communities extending them with the capability to exchange data on tissue, environmental and DNA sample as well as sequences. The GGBN Data Standard incorporates all molecular terms of MIxS, and can also handle SPREC and large parts of BRISQ. It has been developed as a cross-domain effort lead by the Global Genome Biodiversity Network together with colleagues from DwC, ABCD, MIxS, GBIF, ESBB and others over the last years.

Namespace URI: http://data.ggbn.org/schemas/ggbn/terms/ with preferred namespace prefix “ggbn”.

A list of mandatory and recommended fields for sharing data with GGBN as well as information on how to map your data can be found here.