Collect the publishing countries for GBIF

[qifeng-bai]

I have a question about setting the publishingCountry field on a dataset in GBIF.

For example, I updated the publishing country to AF (Afghanistan) in one of the records, which can be found here:
https://api.gbif-uat.org/v1/dataset/search?publishingCountry=AF

However, I noticed that https://api.gbif-uat.org/v1/node/country does not list AF.

This endpoint is used to generate the country list from which ALA selects when filtering datasets from GBIF by country.

Are there any limitations on which publishingCountry values can be set? For instance, is it restricted to only countries that GBIF recognises or supports?

[qifeng-bai]

Related to : #261

[qifeng-bai]

I am reviewing two existing functions in the ALA Collectory.

The first is “Sync a resource to GBIF”, where we can select a GBIF repatriation country from a list. This list uses the standard ISO country codes and includes, for example, AFG.

The second is “Repatriate datasets from GBIF”, where the repatriation country list comes from /nodes/country, which does not include AFG.

I’m wondering if the country lists used in these two functions should be consistent.

[qifeng-bai]

Answers from Tim GBIF

When syncing to the registry, you would be creating publishing Organisations in GBIF. 
The org has a country and that would be those that Peggy (for the ALA instance) as Node manager have endorsed. That could be any country.

My understanding of the data repatriation is that it is about importing data to an ALA instance that has been published elsewhere. Again this could include data from countries that are not participating in GBIF governance, so the nodes/country would be wrong to use there - potentially it could be any country.

Because we copy the country of the organisation to the occurrences, you can get a definite list of countries from which you repatriate data from using [this call](https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search?limit=0&facet=publishingCountry&facetLimit=1000). You could consider using that? (edited)

From Matt GBIF
I'll just add that our list of countries/islands/territories is in the API here: https://api.gbif.org/v1/enumeration/country or here: https://api.gbif.org/v1/enumeration/basic/Country

[qifeng-bai]

Revised to:

Case 1: Any countries - ISO3 stored in repatrationCountry in ALA, but ISO2 to GBIF
Case 2: Countries returned from GBIF /basic/Country - ISO2