How Does Sharing Data from Research Institutions on Global Biodiversity Information Facility Enhance Its Scientific Value?

For decades, thousands of scientific institutions worldwide have been digitizing collections documenting biodiversity. The advantages and benefits of this process are widely described. In this study, we test the hypothesis that digital data from local scientific institutions gain additional value once shared through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). We have closely examined the fate of over 2.2 million digital records deposited at the Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland (FBAMU), which have been available to the global community for over three years. The effectiveness of this effort is measured by the number of downloads (approximately 123,000), the number of records downloaded (45 billion), and most importantly, the number of scientific publications utilizing these data (an average of 3 publications per week). These publications appear both in the most prestigious scientific journals and regional sources. The thematic scope of papers utilizing FBAMU data shared through GBIF is very broad, covering 12 research areas, including fundamental biological fields (morphology, taxonomy and systematics, phylogeny and evolution, paleobiology, ecology, biogeography, biodiversity conservation, and biodiversity informatics), closely related applied research (agriculture and human health), and climate science and linguistic phylogeny. The most frequent uses of GBIF/FBAMU data have been in studies on processes and phenomena such as biodiversity loss, biological invasions, biogeographical patterns, changes in species ranges, climatic niche dynamics, interactions between organisms, and mechanisms of evolution.