Registration

1. Background The Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFB) is a multi-stakeholder research collaborative that seeks to provide a platform for data sharing, support services, and cutting-edge research. The GFB was developed to better understand broad-scale patterns and processes associated with the planet’s forty million square kilometers of forested ecosystems.

The GFB seeks to consolidate field-based inventory data, including large-scale inventory data as well as records from long-term observational plots, from around the world in support of biodiversity, ecological, socio-economic, and policy-driven research in forest and resource management, and environmental political consulting (e.g. IPCC, ministries, political initiatives etc.). The GFB is comprised of over 100 individuals and organizations, and is managed by a core group of scientists (GFB Steering Committee) responsible for the GFB Data Center (GFB-DC) and for facilitating data management. The GFB has tentatively established the following preliminary guidelines and are now welcoming new data contributions and research interests under these guidelines. The guidelines are subject to change in future, and the updated guidelines will be posted on http://jiliang.forestry.wvu.edu/research

2. Participant Requirements The GFB Initiative consists of registered data contributors (GFB-C) and data users (GFB-U).
3. GFB-C: Data contributors are those who have deposited data with GFB. After GFB confirms the acceptance of their data, one has acquired the official GFB Data Contributor title. One can choose to become a GFB-C at any time, but those who joined GFB the earliest would have to participate in future GFB funding, research, and other team-wide opportunities and management;
4. GFB-U: Data users are scientists, researchers, and policy makers who utilize the data to inform research and policy-making. GFB-U must acquire permission from GFB-C to utilize data for each of their specific project; Prospective GFB-U must submit a formal proposal following the template detailed in . One can choose to become a GFB-U at any time, but one’s privileges to participate in all future GFB funding, research, and other team-wide opportunities will depend on his/her contribution to and membership duration with GFB;
5. GFB will store the data in a secure fashion in the GFB Data Center (GFB-DC), and will not release any data to anyone without the approval of GFB-C. GFB will contact GFB-C with data inquiries from GFB-U, after which the two parties (i.e. GFB-C and GFB-U) can negotiate data use, coauthorship terms, and other benefits and responsibilities. GFB will release the compiled data to GFB-U, once GFB-C has notified GFB that an agreement with GFB-U has been reached.
6. Responsibilities
7. GFB-C need to ensure their data deposited at GFB are valid and up-to-date (), and fully comply with the policy of the data owners;
8. GFB-C agree to deposit new data at GFB once their databases have been updated;
9. GFB-C are encouraged to 1) submit public domain data (i.e. open-access, publically available) to GFB, and 2) solicit new GFB-C with additional private or public data for GFB.
10. GFB-C are free to participate in other collaborative organizations or initiatives, but in such case would agree to avoid contributing the same data to a simultaneous and competing study or project for another organization or individual;
11. GFB-U agree to comply with GFB policy, and the policy outlined by the data owners and GFB-C; GFB encourages GFB-U to offer GFB-C of the data used in their study collaboration with authorship and/or due acknowledgment.
12. Benefits
13. Through the GFB initiative, GFB-C will increase usage and exposure of their data, and will have more opportunities to participate in a great number of large-scale studies;
14. Through the GFB initiative, GFB-U will have access to a great amount of cleaned and collated ground-sourced forest inventory data for their research and/or policy-making;
15. GFB initiative connects data contributors to data users, and promotes large-scale research based on forest inventory data. Currently, GFB initiative provides these services free of charge, but reserves the right to change the financial terms in future if needed;
16. Membership and Registration
17. The GFBI membership is entirely voluntary, but registered users agree to abide the responsibilities outlined above;
18. To register, simply fill out a registration form at
19. New members will need to get areferral from an existing GFBI member to register.