Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core Maintenance Group of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG). It provides a stable vocabulary, a conceptual model, implementation guides, schemas, and data-exchange specifications for sharing information about biological diversity.
Darwin Core terms provide identifiers, labels, definitions, and usage guidance for concepts used to describe taxa, organisms, occurrences, events, material entities, identifications, locations, geological context, measurements and assertions, agents, media, protocols, references, and related biodiversity information.
For most users, these are the principal entry points:
- Darwin Core Quick Reference Guide: current terms organized for human use, with definitions, comments, and examples
- Darwin Core List of Terms: complete metadata for terms used in the Darwin Core vocabulary, including obsolete terms
- Darwin Core Conceptual Model: the semantic relationships among the principal Darwin Core classes
- Darwin Core Data Package Guide: guidance for representing normalized Darwin Core data as a Frictionless Data Package
- Darwin Core Data Package Quick Reference Guide: tables, fields, constraints, and relationships in the Darwin Core Data Package
- Darwin Core Text Guide: guidance for Darwin Core text files and Darwin Core Archives
- Darwin Core RDF Guide: guidance for using Darwin Core terms in RDF
- Darwin Core XML Guide: guidance for using Darwin Core in XML
- Darwin Core Schemas: machine-readable schemas that are part of or support Darwin Core
Additional guidance, controlled vocabularies, and examples are available through the navigation on the Darwin Core website.
Darwin Core term IRIs are the stable identifiers for terms and can be used to retrieve machine-readable metadata. For example, the term IRI
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord
identifies dwc:basisOfRecord. Clients can request a representation of the term through HTTP content negotiation. Explicit serialization URLs are also available by adding a file extension to the term IRI:
- JSON-LD:
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord.json - RDF/Turtle:
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord.ttl - RDF/XML:
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord.rdf - HTML:
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord.htm
The same pattern applies to terms in the other Darwin Core namespaces. Metadata for complete term lists and their version histories are available from rs.tdwg.org.
For example, a client that has the column header basisOfRecord can construct the term IRI http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/basisOfRecord and retrieve its current definition and other metadata in a machine-readable serialization.
The integrated build process is documented in build/README.md. The build uses authoritative vocabulary and standards metadata from the tdwg/rs.tdwg.org repository and generates the current Darwin Core website and machine-readable artifacts transactionally.
The Darwin Core website is available in multiple languages, see the "文A" menu.
Translations in machine-readable format are in the rs.tdwg.org repository, you will need three files:
- terms/terms-translations.csv
- dc-for-dwc/dc-for-dwc-translations.csv
- dcterms-for-dwc/dcterms-for-dwc-translations.csv
Translations are managed within Crowdin, which makes it easy to keep up with any changes to Darwin Core. If you wish to contribute please go to the Crowdin project and request to join, then email the Darwin Core Maintenance Group.
The Crowdin project has two sections:
[tdwg.rs.tdwg.org] translations– this contains term definitions for several standards. Darwin Core's definitions are in the filesterms,dc-for-dwcanddcterms-for-dwc, and the vocabularies are in the filesestablishmentMeans,degreeOfEstablishmentandpathway.[tdwg.dwc] master— this contains the website, such as the home page, navigation menu, and the text surrounding the lists of terms.
Translating navigation.json first is recommended, as you will then be able to browse the preview site at https://dwc-translation-preview.tdwg.org/.
To avoid conflicts, edits to translations should only be made in Crowdin.
Translations of term data (labels, definitions, examples, comments) are retrieved from the rs.tdwg.org repository, see rs.tdwg.org/TRANSLATIONS.md for details on that process.
Translations of the rest of the Darwin Core website (guides, prose sections, navigation menu etc) is managed here. crowdin.yml configures files required for translation, and as content is translated Crowdin will create pull requests. The only manual edits required are for building a new language (configured at the top of build/build-webpages.py and, once the translation is ready, adding it to the end of the navigation menu.
GitHub Actions are configured to rebuild the website automatically as translations are created and updated. Changes are automatically deployed to https://dwc-translation-preview.tdwg.org/, when the pull request is approved they will appear on https://dwc.tdwg.org/. (Note if the navigation menu hasn't been translated it will be necessary to edit the URL to get to each page.)
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For Darwin Core in general, consider the peer-reviewed article on Darwin Core:
Wieczorek J, Bloom D, Guralnick R, Blum S, Döring 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.