Default fields returned to users have been updated to return
research-grade fields. Previously, we returned the datecollected field
by default, which we do not recommend to be used in scientific
research.
What is datecollected? This is a field created during the data
ingestion process. When a data provider does not provide a full date in
the Darwin Core eventDate field, this complete value or the missing
parts (i.e., month and/or day) are randomly generated and thus may lack
any real meaning. The generated dates are difficult to detect, as they
are randomly distributed. We are currently working to modify our
ingestion pipeline to avoid randomly generating dates. However, dates
remain an issue across biodiversity aggregators and the solution is not
clear (see GBIF for example).
To prevent user misuse of this term, we will no longer be providing
the datecollected field by default and will instead be returning the
following fields: c(“data.dwc:eventDate”, “data.dwc:year”,
“data.dwc:month”, “data.dwc:day”).
Please be advised that these fields are not in date format. Instead,
all dates will be text strings. There are many ways to convert these to
dates, for example, see gatoRs remove_duplicate function or ridigbio
proposed solution here.
Documentation
Additional function documentation has been added to streamline data
use.