IdentifiedBy

IdentifiedBy is a term used in biodiversity informatics, particularly within the Darwin Core standard, to record the name of the person or people who identified a specimen or taxon. It functions as a simple textual field that documents who contributed the taxonomic identification that appears in a record such as an occurrence or taxon description.

In practice, identifiedBy appears in data published by museums, herbaria, and biodiversity databases. It is commonly used alongside related identification fields, such as identifiedDate (the date of the identification) and identificationRemarks (notes about the identification). Some datasets also include identifiedByID to store a unique identifier for the identifying person, enabling linking to external authority records or ORCID profiles.

Usage considerations include that identifiedBy typically records names as provided by the identifying scientist or citizen scientist, and may represent multiple identifiers when taxonomic revisions occur or when more than one expert contributed to the identification. The field is textual and may vary in format across datasets; it is often essential to consult accompanying metadata to understand conventions for multiple names or abbreviations.

Overall, identifiedBy supports provenance and traceability in taxonomic identifications, aiding data quality, attribution, and future re-evaluation of identifications within global biodiversity data exchanges.