Biodiversity Data Curation as a Profession in South African Natural Science Museums

We reflect on our work with several South African natural science museums, most of which lack positions dedicated to managing biodiversity data. We argue that there is a need to recognize the profession of biodiversity data curation, an example of which is described in the area of taxonomic data cleansing and publication. Greater recognition could elevate this work to a professional level and address the lack of capacity in museums, encourage data curators to develop their skills, and give museums a well-trained cohort from which to recruit professionals. We argue that the use of industry-standard tools and practices will improve the integrity, security, and usefulness of potentially valuable biodiversity data. We propose a model of joint responsibility for server administration and biodiversity database hosting, to enable under-resourced museums to benefit from the systems administration capacity of a well-resourced organization.