One of the major tasks of biogeography is to investigate the link between the physical environment and the distribution of species / habitats / biomes. This requires the researcher to handle data representing the physical environment, for example climate or land use data. These datasets are generated by different research groups, stored at different repositories and come in very different data formats and resolutions. Large parts of the work are therefore to access and harmonise these datasets. Given the large heterogeneity of these datasets this has shown to be challenging for many researchers not only because it requires knowledge on how to handle the specific tools required for handling the data, but also because the researcher might not be aware that a certain dataset exists.
To ease the technical aspects of the work in biogeography and to thereby higher efficiency, I initiated the DataGURU server (dataguru.lu.se), a data server which allows to access datasets required for biogeographical work such as climate data (historical and projections), land use data (historical and projections), habitat data projections and many other data sets. It is free of use and allows the user to explore datasets and do the majority of the post-processing, for example trimming the spatial and temporal extent, changing temporal and spatial resolution in an intuitive web based graphical user interface.  
The server also allows the dissemination of project data, providing any researcher with the opportunity to make the data online accessible even for the review process, which has shown to be an advantage as it demonstrates the availability of the data for the reviewer. DataGURU can issue DOIs and has been accredited as an official data repository by the ‘Nature’ journal.

DataGURU has been funded by BECC and MERGE, the initial implementation was done by Zhendong Wu. It is currently maintained by Michael Mishurov.