Data Fika

A monthly online fika about biodiversity data. Ten short sessions - from your first GBIF download to a fully reproducible research workflow - for data stewards and researchers at Swedish universities, museums, botanical gardens and data infrastructures.

When: once a month on Fridays, 11:00–11:45 (Swedish time), September 2026 – June 2027
Where: online — the video link will be sent with the invitation
Format: 20–30 minute presentation followed by ~15 minutes hands-on work and Q&A
Cost: free — bring your own coffee
How to join: email lena.thole@nrm.se or gbif@nrm.se to be added to the invitation list

About the series

Data Fika is a GBIF-centered training series built around the researcher’s journey with GBIF-mediated data. Rather than front-loading theory, participants handle a real GBIF download from the second session onwards; standards, the data model, data cleaning and fitness for use are then taught against data you already have in hand. Publishing your own data to GBIF is covered in a dedicated, steward-facing session towards the end of the series.

The series is aimed at data stewards and researchers working with biodiversity data at Swedish universities, natural history museums, botanical gardens and national data infrastructures — but anyone interested in open biodiversity data is welcome.

Each session stands on its own, so you can join the whole series or just the sessions that are relevant to you. Recordings and materials are shared with participants after each session.

How to join

Email lena.thole@nrm.se or gbif@nrm.se with Data Fika in the subject line to be added to the invitation list. You will receive calendar invitations with the zoom link, and the materials after each session.

Participation is free and no preparation is needed.

Help us spread the word — download the Data Fika flyer (PDF) and share it with colleagues or pin it up by the coffee machine.

Programme 2026/27

Sessions take place on the second Friday of the month (May and June: first Friday), 11:00–11:45.

#	Date	Session	Topics
1	11 Sep 2026	Intro to GBIF	What GBIF is and why open biodiversity data matters. DOIs, versioning and the data lifecycle. A first look at FAIR. Ends with everyone pulling a first download.
2	9 Oct 2026	Reusing Data from GBIF	Website downloads, rgbif, pygbif and the API. Reproducible downloads and their DOIs. Cubes. Occurrence vs sample data. Darwin Core Archives and DwC-DP. SBDI vs GBIF.org — when to use which.
3	13 Nov 2026	Standards, Identifiers & Metadata	What the Darwin Core columns in your download mean. TDWG standards. Persistent identifiers (UUIDs, RORs, ORCIDs, DOIs). Metadata and ISO formats.
4	11 Dec 2026	The GBIF Data Model	How GBIF represents occurrences, events and measurements — and why sample/event data differs from presence-only. Long vs wide format, SQL for cubes. Data management basics: folder structures, file naming, version control, ReadMe files.
5	8 Jan 2027	Data Cleaning	Coordinate validation with CoordinateCleaner. Taxonomic name resolution — Dyntaxa vs the GBIF backbone for Swedish material. Date parsing, duplicate detection and encoding issues.
6	12 Feb 2027	Fitness for Use & Sampling Bias	Cleaned ≠ fit for your question. Spatial, temporal and taxonomic bias. Presence-only pitfalls, basisOfRecord filtering, coordinate uncertainty. Diagnosing bias in your own download.
7	12 Mar 2027	Licences & Sensitive Data	The Creative Commons family and GBIF's three licences. Artportalen's protected-species generalisation, GDPR and the recorder, public-authority access. Embargoes and data agreements.
8	9 Apr 2027	FAIR & CARE Principles	FAIR as practical implementation. CARE as a governance framework: who decides, and the history of collections — grounded in Swedish collections' own holdings and Sámi data governance.
9	7 May 2027	Publishing Data to GBIF	How collection data becomes a published GBIF dataset: Darwin Core mapping, extensions, metadata and licensing choices — with a small look at the IPT behind the scenes.
10	4 Jun 2027	End-to-End Research Data Workflow	A capstone tying it all together: download, clean, check fitness, integrate with other sources, produce a figure and document it reproducibly — and cite everything.

Companion workshops

Four optional 2-hour companion events let you go deeper, :

16 Oct 2026 10-12 a hands-on download workshop after session 2
19 Feb 2027 10-12 one extended cleaning-and-fitness workshop combining sessions 5 and 6
16 Apr 2027 10-12 a CARE discussion (about one hour) with invited speakers alongside session 8
4 Jun 2027 13-15 a data-integration deep-dive after session 10.

Dates for the workshops are announced with the session invitations.

Contact

Data Fika is organised by GBIF Sweden, hosted at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM). Questions, suggestions for topics, or want to present something at a session? Contact us at lena.thole@nrm.se or gbif@nrm.se.