The core mission of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) (www.idiv.de) is to promote theory-driven synthesis and data-driven theory in biodiversity science. iDiv conducts research in four main areas of biodiversity science - patterns, processes, functions and social relevance.

More than two hundred iDiv scientists use and produce multidisciplinary biodiversity datasets including plant traits, land-use, plot-inventories, metabolomics, species distributions, climate and taxonomic with spatial and temporal dimensions ranging from local to global. The research projects are highly collaborative and the data sources vary from field collections to data aggregated from databases affiliated with other research platforms including Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning Project in China (BEF-China) (http://www.bef-china.de/index.php/en/), Biodiversity Exploratories (http://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/) and TRY Plant Trait database (https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Home.php).

In order to support biodiversity data management and preservation in this complex setting, we have developed the iDiv Biodiversity Data Portal (iBDP) (http://idata.idiv.de). iBDP is built using the open source BEXIS 2 platform (http://fusion.cs.uni-jena.de/bexis/download) for data management and Liferay Portal (http://www.liferay.com/) for building user-friendly website and web applications. As a backend iBDP is using PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases to manage structured and unstructured datasets. The portal is designed to handle large and complex datasets without difficulty. For example, we imported a 500 GB dataset in XML format to iBDP without experiencing any major changes in system performance.

The iBDP metadata schema complies with the ABCD, EML and Gene Expression Omnibus metadata standards enabling interoperability with national and international initiatives. The metadata is openly available for data discovery and sharing. Based on access rights primary biodiversity data is provided to only authorised users.

iBDP supports several file formats for storing data including XML, SQL, CSV, shapefiles and spreadsheet. The salient features of the portal are (1) simple workflow to create metadata and data structures, (2) re-use of data structure and attributes to avoid duplications, (3) faceted search for quick discovery, (4) long-term storage of data and (5) promoting sharing and reuse of data.

Recently, the iDiv consortium approved the data sharing and portal use policy applicable to iDiv biodiversity data. Through regular data management workshops, iDiv Biodiversity Informatics Unit make concerted efforts to ensure the datasets provided by iDiv scientists adhere to international standards, contain sufficient metadata and are consistent with the iDiv data policy. Presently, iDiv is developing an interface with Pensoft Publishers (http://www.pensoft.net) to facilitate publication of biodiversity data papers.