New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Science News
from research organizations

New life for old data

Date:
May 15, 2015
Source:
Pensoft Publishers
Summary:
A new article demonstrates how XML markup applied to texts using the GoldenGate editor can address the challenges presented by unstructured legacy data. The paper demonstrates how structured primary biodiversity data can be extracted from legacy sources and aggregated with and jointly queried with data from other Darwin Core-compatible sources, to present a visualization of these data that can communicate key information contained in biodiversity literature.
Share:
FULL STORY

XML markup of taxonomic research and specimen data is a valuable tool for structuring the incessantly accumulating biodiversity knowledge. It allows for the opportunity to collectively use the currently fragmented information for more detailed analysis.

A new research paper, published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, demonstrates how XML markup using GoldenGATE can address the challenges presented by unstructured legacy data, like those presented in the widely used PDF format. The paper demonstrates how structured primary biodiversity data can be extracted from such legacy sources and aggregated with and jointly queried with data from other Darwin Core-compatible sources, to present a visualization of these data that can communicate key information contained in biodiversity literature.

Specimen data in taxonomic literature are among the highest quality primary biodiversity data. Innovative cybertaxonomic journals such as the Biodiversity Data Journal are using workflows that preserve the data's structure and semantic specificity and disseminate electronic content to aggregators and other users that makes these data reusable.

Such structure however is lost in traditional taxonomic publishing and currently, access to that resource is cumbersome, especially for non-specialist data consumers.

The question is: how do you manage this vast distributed repository of knowledge about biodiversity to make it easily available reusable for future research?

To answer this challenge this project queried XML structured articles published in Biodiversity Data Journal along with historical taxonomic literature marked up using GoldenGATE, and represents the results as a series of standard charts. XML structured documents are maintained by the Swiss NGO Plazi and are freely available online.

In such form, data associated with specimens becomes much more valuable as it can reveal key information about a particular species, and even about the scientists who investigate them. Charts indicate at a glance, for example, what time of year and elevation range a species is likely to be found at, useful information if you want to search for it in the field.

Our accumulated biodiversity knowledge includes an estimated 2-3 billion specimens in natural history collections and 500 million pages of printed text. These are the data we need to answer questions that are relevant to our world today, like setting conservation priorities and anticipating the effects of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem functions that affect the lives of people.

"In short, we have half a billion pages worth of biodiversity knowledge and are just learning how to query it. The real power comes when data from many articles are combined, queried, and reused for new purposes. Potential applications span the scientific, policy, and public spheres. When we all have better access to the information that already exists in the global corpus of biodiversity literature, this helps us do a better job of exploring what we don't know and wisely applying what we do." explains the lead author Dr Jeremy Miller, Naturalis Biodiversity Center.


Story Source:

Materials provided by Pensoft Publishers. The original story is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Jeremy Miller, Donat Agosti, Lyubomir Penev, Guido Sautter, Teodor Georgiev, Terry Catapano, David Patterson, David King, Serrano Pereira, Rutger Vos, Soraya Sierra. Integrating and visualizing primary data from prospective and legacy taxonomic literature. Biodiversity Data Journal, 2015; 3: e5063 DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e5063

Cite This Page:

Pensoft Publishers. "New life for old data." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 May 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150515111648.htm>.
Pensoft Publishers. (2015, May 15). New life for old data. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150515111648.htm
Pensoft Publishers. "New life for old data." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150515111648.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

Explore More

from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES