Ozboneviz: An Australian Precedent in FAIR 3D Imagery and Extended Biodiversity Collections

Billions of specimens are in biodiversity collections worldwide, and this infrastructure is crucial for research on Earth’s natural history. Three-dimensional (3D) imagery of specimens is an increasingly important part of the ‘Digital Extended Specimen’ network of metadata. Open access, high fidelity 3D imagery of biodiversity specimens improves researcher efficiency, equity and increases public engagement with collections. We introduce Ozboneviz, an open access collection of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) 3D imagery aiming to enhance research capacity in Australasian vertebrate skeletal morphology. Ozboneviz is an Australian test case demonstrating the feasibility of creating multi-institutional, FAIR 3D biodiversity imagery collections. We outline project design, challenges, and use by the international research community. We then discuss the urgent need for investment in infrastructure and curatorial support to progress the digitisation of Australian biodiversity collections in a way that maximises stakeholder benefit and facilitates 3D data discoverability and retrieval.