Darwin Core
Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core Maintenance Interest Group. It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions. Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.
Getting started
Darwin Core Quick Reference Guide
Documents:
- List of terms document: Comprehensive metadata for current and obsolete terms in human readable form
- Complete term history table: A CSV file with the full version history of Darwin Core terms
- Distribution documents: Simple CSV files to start using Darwin Core
- Website documents: Markdown files that form the source for the Darwin Core website
Community:
- How to contribute: a guide on how to contribute to Darwin Core
- Darwin Core Q&A: an open forum on the use of Darwin Core
Repo structure
The repository structure is described below. Files/directories indicated with GENERATED
should not be edited manually.
βββ .github
β βββ ISSUE_TEMPLATE : Directory of issue templates generated by GitHub
β βββ CONTRIBUTING.md : Guide on how to contribute, create issues, etc.
β
βββ build
β βββ doe-cv-build : Directory of build scripts for the degreeOfEstablishment controlled vocabulary
β βββ em-cv-build : Directory of build scripts for the establishmentMeans controlled vocabulary
β βββ pw-cv-build : Directory of build scripts for the pathway controlled vocabulary
β βββ README.md : Workflow for generating a new version of the vocabulary
β βββ build-termlist.ipynb : Juyter notebook to construct the term list
β βββ build-temlist.py : Script to build Markdown pages that provide term metadata for complex vocabularies
β βββ build.py : Build script to generate distribution files from the normative document
β βββ generate_term_versions.py : Script to build the terms_versions.csv file
β βββ qrg-list.csv : List of the term IRIs in the order that they are to appear in the Quick Reference Guide
β βββ requirements.txt : List of libraries required by the build scripts
β βββ termlist-footer.md : Footer to append to the generated term list document
β βββ termlist-header.md : Header to prepend to the generated term list document
β βββ terms.tmpl : A Jinja2 template to format the Quick Reference Guide
β βββ workflow_diagram.png : Figure used in README.md to show how to create a new version of the standard
βββ dist : GENERATED Distribution files generated by build.py
β Β βββ simple_dwc_horizontal.csv : GENERATED CSV file with Simple Darwin Core terms as a row
β Β βββ simple_dwc_vertical.csv : GENERATED CSV file with Simple Darwin Core terms as a column
β
βββ docs
β βββ doe : Degree of Establishment Controlled Vocabulary List of Terms
β βββ em : Establishment Means Controlled Vocabulary List of Terms
β βββ list : Darwin Core List of Terms documents
β βββ namespace : Darwin Core namespace policy
β βββ pw : Pathway Controlled Vocabulary List of Terms
β βββ rdf : Darwin Core RDF Guide
β βββ simple : Simple Darwin Core Guide
β βββ terms : GENERATED Quick Reference Guide
β βββ text : Darwin Core Text Guide (Darwin Core Archive specification)
β βββ xml : Darwin Core XML Guide
β βββ _data : Website navigation and footer
β βββ _config.yml : Jekyll site configuration
β βββ CNAME : Canonical Name record for dwc.tdwg.org
β βββ index.md : Website home page
β
βββ vocabulary
β βββ term_versions.csv : Darwin Core term versions, contains the complete history of the terms
β
βββ .gitignore : Files and directories to be ignored by git
βββ LICENSE : Repository license
βββ README.md : Description of this repository
Contributors
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Recommended citation
For Darwin Core in general, consider the peer-reviewed article on Darwin Core:
Wieczorek J, Bloom D, Guralnick R, Blum S, DΓΆring M, et al. (2012) Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29715. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029715
For this repository:
Darwin Core Maintenance Interest Group, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) (2014). Darwin Core. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.592792
The citation above represents all versions of the repository. Specific versions/releases from 2011 onwards are also deposited on Zenodo.