Global Biodiversity Information Facility

GBIF's 'Participants' are nations and organizations that collaborate to advance free and open access to biodiversity data. Map: Participant nations, 2025. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the world; GBIF's information architecture makes these data accessible and searchable through a single portal. Data available through the GBIF portal are primarily distribution data on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes for the world, and scientific names data.

The mission of the GBIF is to facilitate free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide to underpin sustainable development. Priorities—with an emphasis on promoting participation and working through partners—include mobilising biodiversity data, developing protocols and standards to ensure scientific integrity and interoperability, building an informatics architecture to allow the interlinking of diverse data types from disparate sources, promoting capacity building and catalysing development of analytical tools for improved decision-making.