Background

Cover Illustration: Parnassia palustris from Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885.

The European project Biodiversity Meets Data (BMD) is developing a shared digital infrastructure and advanced analytical tools to facilitate access to, integration of, and collaboration on biodiversity data. By linking European regulatory and management requirements with scientific research, BMD aims to make data more and more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), thereby improving environmental monitoring and decision-making processes. The BMD project recommends and actively promotes the use of GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) as a primary FAIR platform for the mobilization and publication of biodiversity data.

This operational manual, developed as part of the MetaPlantCode project, funded by Biodiversa+, provides a practical guide for the preparation, structuring, and publication of checklists, Red Lists, and botanical floras via the GBIF platform. Its primary objective is to overcome the fragmentation and lack of interoperability among regional and national taxonomic data, making such data accessible in a standardized, machine-readable format.