About Specimen Finder

Specimen Finder is an independent open-source project. It has two parts:

• The free browser tool (source): name or photo lookup, a specimen map, data-quality flags and care info. No account, free for good.
• Specimen Finder Pro (this site, source): a hosted account for saved searches, filters, private notes, batch species lists and Darwin Core export.

Data and licensing

Specimen and occurrence records come from the GBIF public API at the moment you run a search. They are contributed by the institutions that hold the specimens and stay under each publisher’s licence (CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC). Exports keep the licence, rights holder and dataset of every record.

Names are resolved with the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. When you search a synonym, results use the accepted name so records filed under any synonym of it are included, and the page says so.

How to cite

Every search page and export includes citation text of the form GBIF.org (date) GBIF Occurrence Search, URL. If you publish work that uses a set of records, GBIF asks you to register it as a derived dataset so it gets a DOI that credits every contributing institution. See GBIF citation guidelines.

Limits worth knowing

• GBIF holds only what institutions have digitised and published. Many specimens are not online yet.
• Coordinates and dates are as published. Some are wrong or vague, so check the issue column and the original record before relying on a point.
• Names follow the GBIF backbone, which can differ from your regional flora.

Contact

Use the feedback form or open a GitHub issue.