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GBIF checklists

A GBIF checklist is a dataset type on GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) — one of four kinds of dataset GBIF recognizes, alongside occurrence, sampling-event, and metadata-only datasets. Where an occurrence dataset records individual sightings or specimens, a checklist records which taxa are known to occur in a region or taxonomic group, each backed by a taxonomic concept rather than a single observation.

Once published through a GBIF-registered IPT (Integrated Publishing Toolkit), a checklist gets its own GBIF dataset page, a persistent DOI, and becomes queryable alongside every other checklist on GBIF — which is what lets reconciliation tools (like Checklist Hub's own Reconciliation view) compare one region's checklist against another's.

Darwin Core Archive

Structurally, a checklist is published as a Darwin Core Archive built around a Taxon core file — one row per accepted name, with fields like scientific name, taxonomic rank, and accepted-name usage — plus optional extensions such as Distribution, VernacularName, or Species Profile that add region-specific occurrence status, common names, or ecological attributes to each taxon.

Publishing a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) to GBIF means packaging your validated checklist into this standard exchange format and submitting it through an IPT— GBIF doesn't accept checklist uploads directly, since the IPT is what registers the dataset, assigns it a DOI, and keeps it re-harvestable whenever you publish an update.

  1. 1
    Get the checklist review-ready — every species needs at least one reviewer's sign-off and no open taxonomy conflicts. Checklist Hub's Review species step blocks you here until that's true.
  2. 2
    Fill in dataset metadata — title, description, contributors, and a license (GBIF requires CC0, CC-BY, or CC-BY-NC). Checklist Hub's Define Metadata step collects this before generating the package — dataset summary, source counts, and the classification breakdown are filled in for you from the Workbench data already gathered.
  3. 3
    Generate the Darwin Core Archive — Checklist Hub builds the Taxon core file, extensions like vernacularname.txt and multimedia.txt, plus meta.xml and eml.xml automatically and packages them into a single zip, previewed in the Darwin Core Format step before you download it.

IPT

Either your institution's own IPT installation, or one run by a publishing partner (a national GBIF participant node, museum, or university). If you don't have one yet, GBIF's IPT page explains how to request access through your country's GBIF node.

  1. 4
    Get access to a GBIF-registered IPT
  2. 5
    Upload it to the IPT and register — in Publish to GBIF, pick the publisher org and installation, download the package, and upload it as a resource on that IPT. The IPT publishes it, GBIF harvests it, and it's assigned a dataset key and DOI.
  3. 6
    Paste the published URL back — this marks the checklist Published in Checklist Hub and records the DOI/citation against it for good.