Data mobilization call 2025

Co-funding to prepare and publish species occurrence data (2025)

Call for data mobilization proposals to prepare your species occurrence data and ensure the data quality before datasets are published in GBIF and the Norwegian Species Map (Artskart). Successful applications receive co-funding contributions as a grant to the applicant institution/company. The responsible institution/company is expected to provide complementary self-funded work or financial contributions matching the financial support from GBIF Norway. The total budget for this call is 500 000 NOK and the maximum contribution from GBIF Norway to each project is 100 000 NOK.

Deadline 15th June 2025

Priority criteria:

• Marine species (explore the OBIS data stream)
• Environment DNA data (or other DNA sequence data) -- explore the Metabarcoding toolkit
• Ecological sampling event data -- using the Humboldt Extension - and the new DwC Data Package format
• New data publishers based in Norway (Datasets from Norwegian institutions/companies not yet publishing datasets in GBIF)
• Proposals are also evaluated based on the level of co-funding

Project requirements: 

1. This call addresses Norwegian institutions and companies.
2. Datasets prepared for publication must follow the international Darwin Core data standard. Characteristics of eligible datasets include for each data record, a mandatory taxon name, geographic location (preferably georeferenced), and temporal description (date or time period). Species occurrence data should contain presence/absence information or quantitative information.
3. Scientific taxon names must be validated against the Norwegian National checklist (Artsnavnebasen) or other relevant regional or global checklists such as the Catalogue of Life or Global Names.
4. We recommend that datasets be validated using the GBIF data validator tool.
5. All resulting datasets must be openly published to GBIF and Artskart (using GBIF IPT, Artsobservasjoner, or similar). Datasets can be prepared following the format of the Darwin Core spreadsheet template provided by GBIF (or the template from GBIF Norway) and sent by email to GBIF Norway (helpdesk@gbif.no). The responsible institute can alternatively install and use standard data publishing software such as the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).
6. Sensitive species occurrence data must be managed in the appliance with the guidelines and regulations provided by the Norwegian Environment Agency (Miljødirektoratet) and the Ministry of Climate and Environment (Miljødepartementet). See also the guidelines and regulations for open access to public data (Offentlighetsloven) provided by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI.no) and the Government of Norway. And the FAIR data principles (Wilkinson 2016).
7. Resulting species occurrence datasets must be licensed either as Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or as Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) to be compatible with the GBIF data sharing agreement.
8. If the application includes the preparation of species occurrence data from another data owner than the project coordinating institution/company, the respective public access to these data must be agreed upon and consolidated with the data owner in advance.
9. Co-funding from this call will only be provided for the preparation and subsequent publication of species occurrence data. Funding for fieldwork to collect information or biological material is not eligible for funding under this call. Funding for research activities or activities to manage or physically conserve the respective biological material is not eligible for funding under this call.
10. GBIF Norway strongly recommends that data owners prepare metadata descriptions on the dataset level following the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) and that all specimens and data records be assigned persistent and globally unique identifiers (such as UUID or DOI).
11. All applicants must provide a basic data management plan (DMP) describing how the mobilized dataset will be managed in compliance with best practices and the data requirements of this call.

If successfully co-funded projects are significantly delayed, or the prerequisites (technical, scientific, economic, or concerning progress) are no longer present, then GBIF Norway must be notified. The first data from your project is expected to be published in GBIF before the end of 2025. A progress report must be submitted before the end of 2025.

Proposals are evaluated based on the criteria in the call and the application form. The cost per data record and the data management plan will also be considered for the evaluation.

For questions regarding the application, contact Vidar Bakken, <vidar.bakken@usit.uio.no>, Dag Endresen, <dag.endresen@nhm.uio.no> or GBIF Norway helpdesk at <helpdesk@gbif.no>.