The public data and tools made available by FinBIF is free for all to use subject to the license under which they have been published. However, where appropriate, you are obliged to acknowledge or cite FinBIF and/or the original data providers in any publication that relies on FinBIF data or services.
Please refer to the following detailed instructions to decide which method of citation or acknowledgment best fits your situation.
Why citation and acknowledgment is important
Properly citing and acknowledging the data and tools you rely on to produce a published work is important for many reasons. First, it makes your work transparent, reproducible, and trustworthy to your audience by allowing them to refer to and access the original sources of information. Second, it helps providers such as FinBIF to understand the use of our data and tools, and to communicate with our stakeholders and funders the value of the resources that go into making data and tools openly available.
How to cite or acknowledge FinBIF resources
How you cite or acknowledge FinBIF resources depends on a number of factors:
- What resource you are using (data, a website, offline software, images, etc.)
- How you accessed the resource (from the website, a data download, using the API, etc.)
- What you use the resource for (a scientific publication, a website, social media post, etc.)
FinBIF as a whole
All authors that benefit from FinBIF/laji.fi as a resource are obliged to acknowledge the organisation using our ROR ID in the following or similar fashion:
We acknowledge the use of the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (https://ror.org/01c0yey93)
If you would like to cite FinBIF as an organisation we recommend citing the following publication:
Schulman, L., Lahti, K., Piirainen, E., Heikkinen, M., Raitio, O. and Juslén, A., 2021. The Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility as a best-practice model for biodiversity data infrastructures. Scientific Data, 8(1), p.137.
To cite the laji.fi website as a whole use, e.g.,
The Finnish Biodiversity Information website at http://laji.fi. Accessed 5 April 2023.
Republishing images, text and data from FinBIF
Images, often text and sometimes other data, is subject to copyright and this should be taken into account if the intention is to reuse material provided by FinBIF. Unless otherwise indicated, copyright holders of material on laji.fi and its associated entities retain all rights to the works they have contributed. Much of the material to which copyright applies on laji.fi has some form of copyright waiver applied, such as a Creative Commons agreement. Depending on the context this may mean the text can be reused without restriction or with an appropriate attribution. It is up to the user to understand the requirements of copyright in the jurisdictions that apply when republishing material they have sourced from FinBIF. Some jurisdictions may not recognise Creative Commons copyright waivers while others may enforce less restriction under fair use clauses.
Citing and using text on laji.fi
Some texts such as taxon descriptions often have a named author, in which case the author should be included in the citation text, e.g.,
Ryttäri, T., FinBIF, https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38815. Accessed 5 April 2023.
Citing taxon checklists
FinBIF publishes a checklist of Finnish taxa annually (https://urn.fi/URN:ISSN:2490-0907). The checklist can be cited as:
FinBIF 2023: The FinBIF checklist of Finnish species 2022. – Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, ISSN: 2490-0907
Individual sections of the checklist have specific authors; to cite these use, e.g.,
Kahanpää, J., Salmela, J., & Jakovlev, J. 2023. Diptera, true flies . – In: FinBIF 2023. The FinBIF checklist of Finnish species 2022 – Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Helsinki.
Citing resources using identifiers
Many resources from FinBIF, including, occurrence records, specimens, monitoring events, datasets and collections, have persistent identifiers which can be used in citations, e.g.,
FinBIF record http://tun.fi/JX.1574477#15. Accessed 3 May 2023.
Citing data downloads
Typically the best way to use and cite FinBIF data, particularly when you use data from multiple FinBIF hosted datasets, is using a data download. Data downloads require a laji.fi account and if they contain restricted data they may require the explicit permission of the data providers before you receive the download. Regardless, each download is stored in perpetuity by FinBIF and is assigned a unique identifier which can be used to cite the data it contains, e.g.,
FinBIF data file http://tun.fi/HBF.49381.
Citing data from GBIF
Many of the datasets hosted by FinBIF are also hosted on GBIF. If you source FinBIF data from GBIF follow their citation guidelines.
Using data via the API and R Package
If you access data via api.laji.fi or using the FinBIF R package it is best to request the data you use as data download (see above) and cite those data using their persistent identifier.
Citing the R package
To cite the FinBIF R package use:
Morris, W. K. (2023). Introduction to the finbif package. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3612814.