The EuropaBON Stakeholder Dashboard: A dynamic web application to map Europe’s biodiversity community

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329390 August 13, 2025 8 / 16 Europe, Southern Europe, and non-European regions). Graph connections represent data-sharing interactions, indicating whether an institution is a biodiversity data user, data provider, or both. The outlines of the nodes are color-coded to consis- tently represent these dimensions. Additional dashboard components include: the total count of institutions and connections in the network, the total count of institutions grouped by dimension, the most connected/central institutions, dimension by centrality and number of events, connections to key EU projects and infrastructures, the most connected EU projects and infrastructures, the total count of EU projects and infrastructures grouped by category, and a data table that summarises all data per institution. The dashboard also offers search functionality, geographic mapping of institutions, and data export options. All network graphs, charts, and tables are dynamically updated using the latest EuropaBON member data [13]. EuropaBON’s network The network currently includes 985 member institutions (i.e., nodes) and 2671 connections (i.e., edges). These are repre- sented by members (n = 590), as well as non-members (n = 395) that have been defined as data providers, -users, or both during the registration process (Table 1). These non-members make up 30% (n = 242) of all of the connections to institu- tions currently registered in the network.

The majority of member institutions are from the academic sector (n = 278), followed (in order of descending abundance) by government organisations (n = 126), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (n = 63), representatives of the private sector (n = 46), and citizen scientists (n = 7). While only a small proportion identified their primary affiliation as citizen science, it is possible that more individuals involved in citizen science chose to register under another institutional category, such as academia or NGOs. Almost half (48%) of members indicated that their work spans more than one realm (n = 269), closely followed by members who work in the terrestrial realm (n = 196). Only 12% (n = 66) and 4% (n = 26) of members reported to work on marine and freshwater species/ecosystems, respectively. In terms of geographic biases, Eastern European members are clearly underrepresented in the network, with only 8% (n = 44) of all registrants. This is notably low given that Eastern Europe accounts for approximately 21% of EU member states [31]. Most members and their institutions are located in Western Europe (n = 166), closely followed by Southern (n = 156), and Northern Europe (n = 108). A total of 82 members are from outside Europe. Data users and providers are relatively balanced across sectors; however, NGOs and members from the private industry sector predominantly use data (S2 Fig). EuropaBON’s stakeholders The three most connected (i.e., highest centrality) and central (highest page rank) members were the Global

Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the European Commission, and the European Environment Agency (EEA) (Fig 3 and Table 2). These three institutions made up > 60% of all connections in the network. When we mapped EU projects and key EU infrastructures that members reported to actively participate in, we found that the majority Table 1. List of the top-ten non-member institutions with the largest degree centrality values. Non-member institution Degree centrality Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) 39 EMODnet 20 Copernicus 16 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 15 National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) 13 National Biodiversity Network (NBN) 13 GenBank 11 NOAA Fisheries 11 European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS) 11 Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) 10 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329390.t001