dwc/README.md

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# Darwin Core
Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core maintenance group. It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to **facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity** by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions. Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.
## Getting started
[Darwin Core quick reference guide](http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/)
Documents:
* [Recommended terms](dist/recommended_terms.csv): a CSV file with the current set of Darwin Core terms
* [Normative document](standard/vocabularies/term_versions.csv): a CSV file with the full version history of Darwin Core terms
* [Usage guides](standard/documents/): Guides on how to use Darwin Core as text, rdf, xml
* [Distribution files](dist/): Convenient files to start using Darwin Core
Community:
* [How to contribute](.github/CONTRIBUTING.md): a guide on how to contribute to Darwin Core
* [Darwin Core Q&A](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc-qa): an open forum on the use of Darwin Core
## Repo structure
The repository structure is described below. Files/directories indicated with `GENERATED` should not be edited manually.
```
├── README.md : Description of this repository
├── LICENSE : Repository license
├── standard : All content considered part of the Darwin Core standard
│ ├── vocabularies
│ │ └── term_versions.csv : Darwin Core term versions, contains the normative definitions of the terms
│ │
│ └── documents
  ├── simple : Simple Darwin Core guide
│  ├── rdf : RDF guide
│  ├── text : Text guide
  └── xml : XML guide
├── www : GENERATED Darwin Core website
│ └── guides
  └── index.html : GENERATED Darwin Core quick reference guide
├── dist : GENERATED Distribution files generated by build.py
  ├── dwc_terms.csv : GENERATED CSV file with the recommended Darwin Core terms, definitions, etc.
  ├── simple_dwc_horizontal.csv : GENERATED CSV file with Simple Darwin Core terms as a row
  └── simple_dwc_vertical.csv : GENERATED CSV file with Simple Darwin Core terms as a column
├── build
  ├── build.py           : Build script to generate distribution files from the normative document
│ └── config : Configuration files for build.py
  ├── index.tmpl       : Template for index.html
│ └── terms.csv : Configuration for the recommended terms, incl. order, labels, examples
├── .github
│ ├── CONTRIBUTING.md : Guide on how to contribute to Darwin Core
│ └── ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md : Template for issues
└── .gitignore : Files and directories to be ignored by git
```
## Contributors
[List of contributors](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/contributors)
## License
[Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
## Recommended citation
For Darwin Core in general, consider the peer-reviewed article on Darwin Core:
> Wieczorek J, Bloom D, Guralnick R, Blum S, Döring M, et al. (2012) Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29715. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029715
For this repository:
> Darwin Core maintenance group, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) (2014). Darwin Core. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.592792
The citation above represents all versions of the repository. Specific [versions/releases](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/releases) from 2011 onwards are also deposited on Zenodo.