Getting started with the data profiles

Modified on: Thu, 26 Sep, 2024 at 5:31 PM

Why are there data profiles?

We have developed data profiles to enable you to more easily find data that is fit for your purpose. The filters were developed to address the following problems:

Using data accessed via the ALA without filtering out records that are not fit for purpose.

Being unsure whether to use particular records or data sets for a given purpose – because quality indicators are not visible, or being unclear on what the information means.

The data profiles are preset, default sets of filters. They can be seen on the search results page in two places – across the top and down the left hand side (screenshot below). Individual filters within the profiles can be adjusted in either area using the checkboxes, although the top section provides access to the preset filter profiles.

search results page showing data quality profiles across the top of the page and in the filters down the left hand side

Note: If you navigate to the spatial portal from the search results page, the data profile and any additional filters you apply will automatically be applied in the spatial portal.

What do the data profiles do?

There are several profiles available, the default profile ALA General profile is designed to exclude lower quality records, while the other profiles fulfil specific needs such as applying the filters used by the Species Distribution Modelling (CSDM) Project or to find records licensed for any use.

Please note the use of the term “lower quality” instead of “low quality”, the filters applied were selected through consultation with the ALA user community, but are not authoritatively the best records for all purposes. Please consider the data that is most fit for your particular purpose and modify the filters and your query accordingly. For more information see our article on how to switch off or modify filters.

Data profiles, and any additional filtering you apply, will be applied to the records you download. This means that records excluded by a data profile in your search results will also be excluded from the download.

The section below gives information on each of the data profiles, if you are looking for more general information regarding the profiles, please also take a look a the Data Profiles FAQs.

What are data profiles?

The data profiles are preset combinations of data quality filters. There are four data quality profiles:

ALA general
Species Distribution Modelling (CSDM)
Data licensed for all uses
AVH

The ALA General profile will remove from view records identified:

with location or spatial issues
as a possible outlier
with unaddressed user questions (assertions)
as being created from environmental DNA analysis or are fossils
as an absence rather than presence record
with the date of the occurrence prior to 1700 or the date given is invalid, for example in the future
with issues in the name given for the organism
with spatial coordinates that are likely to be inaccurate by 10 kilometres or more
as a duplicate record.

The Species Distribution Modelling (CSDM) profile removes from view records identified:

with a spatial issue
as a possible outlier
as created prior to 1970
as a duplicate record

The Data licensed for all uses profile removes from view records:

with a non-commercial use license
with licensing at record rather than dataset level as the licensing will vary for each record in the dataset and would need to be individually checked
from a small number of datasets where the license has been individually created for the dataset and may not be available for commercial use

The AVH profile removes from view records identified: