Virtual Workshop on a Data Standard for Loans and Permits
Contents
September 29-30 2021
Introduction
Natural history collections that are brought to the digital age open up new research and utilisation opportunities and massively increase the mobility of objects and data. However, legal and ethical aspects have to be considered when publishing and using these objects and data: Under the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol, the countries of origin can regulate the use of their material. It is in the interest of the collections to properly manage this information and thus foster transparency and trust. Within networked collections and research infrastructures, there should be an easy way to trace and make visible any information that potentially restricts the use of the material. This concerns also the document management in the collections and the traceability of legal and administrative information. Legal and administrative information may well go beyond the Nagoya documents and include for example documents for collecting, transferring or loaning physical material, access permits for protected areas or phytosanitary documents. A related aspect are ethical aspects such as data protection or the protection or tracing of Traditional Knowledge related to specimens.
To digitally link this kind of information to specimen information and to share it with users via ABCD, DwC and other data standards, a new standard has to be created. GGBN has addressed this topic in its data standard in 2016 by proposing the GGBN Permit and Loan Vocabularies.
These particular classes of the data standard will now be reviewed again within the EU funded SYNTHESYS+ project. The MOBILISE COST Action via its Working Group 3 has identified this standard as one of the important concepts to implement in DiSSCo for the infrastructure to be compliant with national and international laws and regulations. Furthermore, it supports the institutions and the community in their data management endeavours and in implementing the CETAF Code of Conduct as the only ABS best practice example so far which is officially recognized by the European Commission.
Goals
In this workshop we will present the concept of the current loans and permits data standard and seek input from various collection communities regarding their needs and problems. At the end of day two we will discuss the scope of the planned TDWG Task Group “Permits and Loans”. The long-term goal is to develop a data standard that can be used by different communities and shall be coordinated by this TDWG Task Force. More communities will be added at a later point in the process.
In this workshop we will also discuss the implementation of such a standard in infrastructures and portals from a general point of view of what we want to achieve, and more specifically how we could do it.
Scope
The workshop is expected to contribute to an ongoing cross-community discussion on how to support the adequate handling of legal and ethical requirements in natural history collections and related digital data infrastructures. In this context, the community consultation on converging Digital Specimens and Extended Specimens (https://www.gbif.org/news/x7u6tmOhyfTE6rM3FQglK/community-consultation-converging-digital-specimens-and-extended-specimens), especially part 8 on meeting legal/regulatory, ethical and sensitive data obligations (https://discourse.gbif.org/t/8-meeting-legal-regulatory-ethical-and-sensitive-data-obligations/2665) provides an excellent approach to the topic.
As a starting point we have invited four different communities representing the main collections of natural history collections: biological collections, palaeontological collections, geological collections, anthropological collections. In addition to these data providing collections representatives from various data infrastructures will join the discussions.
Outcomes
A publication shall be produced from the workshop results and a proposal to build a TDWG Task Group “Permits and Loans” to develop the standard further will be written afterwards. The workshop shall also incentivize and promote this work.
Background material
Permits/loans data standard, biobanking workflows
- GGBN Data Standard Permit Vocabulary
- GGBN Data Standard Loan Vocabulary
- Examples from GGBN & DSMZ providing permit/loan information
- White paper - The GGBN Data Standard specification
- Slides - Workflow case study DSMZ: linking Nagoya documentation to public collection as a Registered Collection
- Slides - Workflow case study BGBM: biobanking workflows, permit management using Alfresco
- Paper - Zimkus et al. - The Need for Permit Management within Biodiversity Collection Management Systems to Digitally Track Legal Compliance Documentation and *Increase Transparency About Origins and Uses
- SYNTHESYS+ workshop report on biobanking workflows
Nagoya Protocol
- The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing
- CBD Combined study on digital sequence information in public and private databases and traceability
- CETAF Code of Conduct (in particular see page 16 onwards)
Global Biodiversity Outlook 5
Infrastructures, networking activities
- DiSSCo Distributed System of Scientific Collections
- DiSSCo Modelling Framework
- ELViS- European Loans and Visits system
- open Digital Specimen - MOBILISE workshop report
- Paper - Islam, Hardy & Wilson - The European Loans and Visits System(ELViS) and first experiences with Transnational and Virtual Access
- Paper - Islam et al. - Incorporating RDA outputs in the design of a European Research Infrastructure for natural science collections
- Paper - Lendemer et al. - The Extended Specimen Network: A Strategy to Enhance US Biodiversity Collections, Promote Research and Education
- Conference abstract - Buschbom et al. - Participative Decision Making and the Sharing of Benefits: Laws, ethics, and data protection for building extended global communities
- TDWG interest groups
- SYNTHESYS+
- MOBILISE COST Action
- GeoCASe
- PalaeoDB
- Thanados (Anthropology and Archaeology)
- Draft Data Standard extension for ABCD for Anthropology
More Workshop Information
Virtual Workshop on a Data Standard for Loans and Permits
