Track Policies

General Papers

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Posters

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Interest Group

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Empowering International e-Collaboration for Sustainability

Communication and collaboration efforts aimed at sharing information and tool development, which cut across scientific disciplines and geopolitical boundaries, are often hampered by insufficient information about resources developed and used by ongoing projects, restricted funding sources limiting access to expertise (which is also in itself, in short supply), and a lack of sustainable infrastructure. Many of the issues are well known, such as the silos isolating taxonomic domains, geographic and political entities, and the socio-technical challenges of multi-disciplinary communication. Some of the possible solutions are also known, but effective implementation remains a bottleneck. In an international setting, it is important to recognize that external outreach is an integral, explicit part of an eScience collaboration. Likewise, funding agencies also need to work together in concerted partnerships to extend the reach of their investments.

TDWG is well-positioned as an international body to promote the exchange of biodiversity information and empower and implement improved international collaborations. As a volunteer organization, however, TDWG too, faces issues that makes sustained collaboration a challenge. What are the successful models of collaboration? Can they be broadened to facilitate, encourage, and encompass attempts by those disciplines and geopolitical regions working on their own efforts to effectively and sustainably document and share information about biodiversity?

The Sympoisum Keynote Speaker, Eric Meyer will discuss factors for success in bridging the transition to big science.

Directors

Gail Kampmeier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Deborah Paul, iDigBio and iDigInfo
Reed Beaman, University of Florida Herbarium

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium Biodiversity informatics services and workflows

The integration of different Web services in workflows using e-platforms such as Taverna (http://www.taverna.org.uk/) and Kepler (https://kepler-project.org/) has great potential for speeding up the analysis of biodiversity data and the conduct of biodiversity data experiments. By their reusability, the workflow approach contributes substantially to reliability and reproducibility. In turn, the deployment and integration of Web services in workflows helps to identify particular shortcomings of the different service implementations which need to be addressed to increase their usability. The symposium will introduce workflow environments and practical workflow examples with a special emphasis on the deployment of standards and services developed or inspired by TDWG. We expect an interesting discussion on “fitness for use” of TDWG products in workflow contexts instigated by the symposium.

Directors

Anton Güntsch, Freie Universität Berlin Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Big Data coming from Earth Observation Networks

Earth observation is a large virtual community that is growing. The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) has matured to the point that millions of data layers are available. The Group on Earth Observations - Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) is aiming at an operational system by 2015, and the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), the major European contribution to them has just started. Mass-digitisation projects, citizen science and crowd-sourcing provide unprecedented scalability to our observation and occurrence data. This symposium will cover cooperation of and state of the art in implementing the various earth observation projects, programmes, and infrastructures around the world.

Directors

Hannu Saarenmaa, University of Eastern Finland

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Biodiversity Data Quality – issues, methods and tools

Data quality is a major concern in biodiversity informatics. The distributed nature of data acquisition and digitization, the specific difficulties imposed by some of the data sub-domains, such as taxonomic data and geographic data, among other aspects, make it important to discuss data quality in biodiversity so that data made available in portals and other systems can be used for various purposes such as education, science, and decision making. Data standards play an important role on data quality.

In this symposium we will discuss and share experiences on issues related to data quality on biodiversity, including concepts, methodologies, tools and training.

Directors

Antonio Saraiva, University of Sao Paulo

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Crafting the future of a Global Biodiversity Heritage Library for diverse community’s needs

This symposium will focus on strategies for creating, expanding and maintaining a multinational digital library programme; digitisation platforms, standards and services; creating value-added features for discipline-specific communities; use of social media and outreach to increase use and build new audiences; and migration from projects to sustainable programmes.

This session will include presentations from a spectrum of partners from different project-, country-, and continent- collaborators sharing their experiences on facing the mentioned topics of this Symposium and promote a discussion on next steps to improve the needs of scientists.

Directors

Martin Kalfatovic, Smithsonian

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop: Content provision workshop using BioCASe and OpenUp! infrastructure

The OpenUp! project built an network of institutions providing their natural history multimedia content (images, sounds, videos, illustrations) using BioCASe installations to Europeana and GIBIF. The content is provided under various CC licences, and the mapping is almost entirely dependent on TDWG standards using ABCD and EFG mapping standards. The purpose of this workshop is to extend the OpenUp! network by adding new content providers (partners) and increase the diversity of the natural history content available for the public. Content provision will be demonstrated via case studies provided by OpenUp! project partners, content providers and developers, from existing, functional installations.

Directors

Jiri Frank, National Museum Vaclavske namesti 68 115 79 Prague 1 Czech Republic

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop: Documenting the Darwin Core

The documentation of TDWG Standard 450, Darwin Core, is spread out over several documents and websites [1], and it is difficult to understand how it all fits together. Also, within this distributed documentation, there are seemingly conflicting definitions for some terms. For example, although properties of occurrences are well-defined, there is confusion over the meaning of the term occurrence itself [2].

There is a strong sentiment that it would be preferable to build a "semantic layer" on top of Darwin Core, than to rebuild a "semantic Darwin Core" from scratch. The reason for this is all projects have different semantic web needs, and, if forced to start from scratch, will build different semantic Darwin Cores. The resulting ontologies (e.g. BCO, Darwin-SW, and DWC-FP) will have no way of understanding each other. If, on the other hand, they shared a basic underlying vocabulary, there would at least be a chance for data interoperability.

The easiest way to make sure that two applications have the same understanding of a particular term is for the builders of those applications to read and comply with the same term documentation. Thus Darwin Core - a "bag of terms", i.e. a glossary - is a perfect candidate to be a shared base layer for the semantic web, provided that it provides clear definitions for its terms.

Completely documenting Darwin Core is too large a task for a single workshop. Instead, our focus will be on three of the most challenging terms:http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence (dwc:Occurrence), http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/OccurrenceID (dwc:OccurrenceID), and http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/Occurrence (dwctype:Occurrence). There are multiple definitions for these terms [3], and documenting their actual usage, in a single place, will be helpful to anyone wishing to publish or consume occurrence data. Further, properly defining Occurrence will likely shed light on ambiguity around other terms (such as Event and individualID), and point the way to follow-on work.

The goal of the workshop is to formalize, in English, the notions of Darwin Core Occurrence that are currently (either explicitly or implicitly) in practice. Each time we do so, we will take note of

i) how examples of each notion of Occurrence are properly typed using the primitives of RDF and RDFS (primarily noun, verb, instanceOf, class/subClass, property/subProperty); and

ii) how the notions themselves are properly typed in RDF/S.

In a sense, we will be giving the bare minimum definitions required for consistent usage of Occurrence in RDF.

This proposal is complementary, and synergistic with the Semantics for Biodiversity track proposed by Deck, Schildhauer, et al. We agree with the Semantic for Biodiversity organizers that there is value in viewing the "semantics super symposium" and the Darwin Core documentation workshop as a single semantics track, and that sessions should be interleaved.

The workshop will produce the following:

i. A document that lists the current usages and interpretations of dwc:Occurrence and dwctype:Occurrence. Upon completion, this document will be submitted for public comment as a proposed change to Darwin Core, according to the Darwin Core namespace policy [4].

ii. Examples that illustrate the definitions in (i). Where possible, examples will be provided in both spreadsheet and RDF form. These examples will also be submitted as (Type 2) additions to Darwin Core.

Prior to the workshop, we will publish wiki pages containing strawman proposals for outcomes (i) and (ii). We will share these via the tdwg-content mailing list, so that the community can help shape workshop discussion. A possible platform for these wiki pages is the GBIF terminology platform (http://terms.gbif.org), currently being evaluated by the GBIF-TDWG Vocabulary Management Task Group (VoMaG). This would have the added benefit of test-driving the platform as a basis for documenting other TDWG terms.

The workshop will comprise four 90 minute sessions, spread out over at least two days, to allow time for reflection and extra-curricular collaboration.

Sessions one and two of the workshop will consist of facilitated group discussion regarding the meanings of dwc:Occurrence and dwctype:Occurrence. The workshop will have a dedicated facilitator and a (separate) dedicated rapporteur, who will update the wiki as the day progresses. (The wiki will be open to editing by all who request editing privileges – the job of the rapporteur will be to ensure that nothing important is missed.)

Session three will begin with a brief check-in, followed by breakout sessions. Each breakout group will be tasked with producing specific examples (either in spreadsheet or RDF form) that make use of the definitions provided in the previous sessions. To the extent possible, the starting points for these examples will be real biodiversity collection data, and will be solicited and collected from the community in advance. In session four, these examples will be reported to the full group, and possibly modified based on ensuing discussion.

After the workshop, the organizers, or volunteers recruited at the workshop, will produce versions of the two documents for submission as additions to the Darwin Core standard. The organizers will also respond to, and act upon, comments made during public review.

Directors

Gregor Hagedorn, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
James Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Richard Pyle, Bishop Museum 1525 Bernice Street Honolulu, HI 96817
Joel Sachs, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Minimum Information Standards for Biological Collections: Beyond Darwin Core

This symposium will focus on data record characteristics and data management from the collections management perspective. Content will emphasize minimum information required for enhancing the use of collection object data for biodiversity research. Topics addressed might include:

minimum information standards for scientifically useful data,
collections data inadequately reflected in Darwin Core,
managing virtual and physical annotations, to include annotation ontologies,
issues in identifying/differentiating physical objects and the digital records associated with them,
managing multiple collection-object relationships across virtual networks,
re-uniting disparate collections object data,
managing/linking associated media objects,
standards for labeling data elements in publicly accessible user interfaces.

Directors

Gil Nelson, Florida State University
Greg Riccardi, Institute for Digital Information and Scientific Communications Florida State University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Building and maintaining crowd sourcing Websites and their Communities

More and more biodiversity institutions are embracing crowd sourcing as a means of digitising collections and capturing biodiversity data . This symposium aims to provide an opportunity for presentation of activities in this area and discussion of what might be considered best practice.

Directors

Paul Flemons, Australian Museum

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Semantics for Biodiversity - Primer on Semantic Technologies

This session is the prequel to the "Semantics for Biodiversity" track, placed earlier in the meeting to provide a foundation or 60-minute “primer/tutorial” for TDWG participants about semantic technologies, and how these can help inform biodiversity research.

Directors

Steve Baskauf, Vanderbilt University
John Deck, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Schildhauer, Director of Computing, NCEAS

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Semantics for Biodiversity - Technologies, Reasoning and Annotation

This session is the first of three major sessions in the "Semantics for Biodiversity" track. It will focus on semantic technologies, reasoning and annotation methods.

About the Semantics for Biodiversity Track:

This symposium track includes a series of three, 90-minute sessions at TDWG that together constitute a “Semantics for Biodiversity” track, focused on "Technologies, reasoning and annotation methods","Formal models and ontologies"; and "Interoperability with genomic, ecological, and environmental semantics". These sessions are not parallel tracked and are placed on separate days to avoid saturation on the topic. A 60-minute primer/tutorial is scheduled earlier in the conference to provide basic background for TDWG participants about semantic technologies, and how these can help inform biodiversity research. It will be helpful to many before attending the core symposium tracks.

The conveners of this Symposium solicited participation from diverse communities, including those from the biodiversity informatics and standards-development community as well as researchers interested in knowledge modeling and semantic application development in the biodiversity sciences, including relevant linkages to investigations in the ecological, genomic and phylogenetic sciences. These thematic areas recommend a stronger-than-usual outreach to the computer science community, as researchers in that community will be particularly attracted by the prospects of reporting their work in a planned (and approved) special issue of the Semantic Web Journal on “Semantics for Biodiversity”. Multiple groups of informaticians and technologists are currently developing semantic technologies to enhance discovery, interpretation, and interoperability of biodiversity data, so the upcoming meeting will provide a signal opportunity to present and discuss these activities in a coordinated fashion before perhaps the most relevant community who can inform, critique, and contribute to these efforts. Further, it's anticipated that these sessions will significantly raise awareness among computer scientists and engineers relative to the informatics challenges confronting the biodiversity community, particularly among those developing generalized knowledge representation and reasoning technologies, and machine-learning approaches.

Directors

Benjamin Adams, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), UCSB
John Deck, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Schildhauer, Director of Computing, NCEAS

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Semantics for Biodiversity - Formal Models and Ontologies

This session is the second of three major sessions in the "Semantics for Biodiversity" track. It will focus on formal models and ontologies.

About the Semantics for Biodiversity Track:

Directors

John Deck, University of California at Berkeley
Nico Franz, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Mark Schildhauer, Director of Computing, NCEAS
Ramona Walls, University of Arizona

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Semantics for Biodiversity - Interoperability with Genomic and Environmental semantics

This session is the third of three major sessions in the "Semantics for Biodiversity" track. It will focus on semantic interoperability of genomic, ecological, and environmental data.

About the Semantics for Biodiversity Track:

Directors

John Deck, University of California at Berkeley
Robert Guralnick, University of Colorado at Boulder
Mark Schildhauer, Director of Computing, NCEAS

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop: Biodiversity for Cooperation and Development

A workshop on Biodiversity for Cooperation and Development, where we will as last year discuss needs, revision of standards and the next year programme as it will be in Africa.

The main aim will be to continue the discussions on the standards updates and ethnobiology standards, encourage participation and trainings of people from low and medium economy countries and also see for the Kenya TDWG meeting next year.

Directors

Patricia Mergen, Royal Museum for Central Africa

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Mobilizing biodiversity information in Sub-Saharan Africa

The African continent, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, is complex geologically, climatically and physiographically. The biological diversity of the region is rich and unique, but not sufficiently documented. Sub-Saharan Africa faces human population challenges, with 800 million people (one-seventh of the global population) dispersed among 50 countries, many with developing economies. The ecosystem services performed by Africa’s rich biodiversity are critical to sustaining the subcontinent’s human populations, yet efforts to document and protect biodiversity in the region are frequently at odds with human concerns such as basic health and nutrition, agricultural production, and political unrest. Ensuring that the unique biodiversity of Sub-Saharan Africa is properly understood and protected requires effective digitization and dissemination of the region’s biodiversity information (i.e., databasing, networking and internet publishing). A session entitled “Mobilizing biodiversity information in Sub-Saharan Africa” is planned for the 2013 TDWG Conference in Florence, Italy. The session will feature talks by recipients of travel awards from JRS Biodiversity Foundation travel awards, representing Madagascar, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Principle Investigators of other JRS Biodiversity Foundation projects focusing on biodiversity informatics training and development of regional biodiversity informatics portals in Sub-Saharan Africa will also be invited to participate.

Directors

Henry Bart, Tulane University
Patricia Mergen, Royal Museum for Central Africa and Botanic Garden Meise

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop Darwin Core Archives: beyond star schema

In 2009, Darwin Core (DwC)[http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/index.htm] was ratified as a TDWG standard. The standard includes the Darwin Core terms and definitions many are familiar with, as well as documentation including the XML [http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm] and Text [http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/text/index.htm] Guides. The Text Guide describes a method for creating a compilation of comma-separated value (CSV) files and a single XML metafile which declares the contents of the CSV files including the terms used, their formatting and how the CSV files relate to one another. There are similar formats used in scientific disciplines and other fields, for instance Google's Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL) [https://developers.google.com/public-data/overview]. Some authors of the Darwin Core standard work for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and they encouraged GBIF to adopt the Darwin Core Text representation as a recommended way to compile datasets for before contributing to GBIF. The Darwin Core Text format was ultimately branded by GBIF as Darwin Core Archives (DwC-A) [http://www.gbif.org/informatics/standards-and-tools/publishing-data/data-standards/darwin-core-archives/].

The DwC Text Guide describes a metafile which declares a core text file, as well as many optional extension text files which can be linked to the core. This structure resembles a star-schema which allows for extensions from the core, but it does not inherently allow for extensions to be linked to other extensions. Data for many simple use cases can be completely expressed using this metafile (for example taxa with occurrences and common names), but many more complicated datasets cannot be expressed in this format without trade-offs. Datasets created using schema with complex elements (for example ABCD), or data from relational databases with many interconnected tables, cannot easily be described by following the Darwin Core Text Guide.

This workshop during the 2013 TDWG Conference will evaluate interest in the community for an updated Darwin Core Text Guide which allows for more complex data; the presenters will demonstrate work done by the Encyclopedia of Life and the DNA Bank Network/GGBN and others in this direction; and an initial recommendations will begin to be draft from the community as to how the Darwin Core Text guide could be enhanced to fully describe complex datasets in a way that is completely forwards and backwards compatible with the current Darwin Core Text Guide.

Directors

Gabriele Droege, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, FU Berlin
Patrick Leary, Encyclopedia of Life Marine Biological Laboratory

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Developing a Names-based Architecture for Linking Biodiversity Data

We expect around 10 short presentations, some open discussion, and (hopefully) speed introductions to the posters.

This session will focus on the role of names infrastructures supporting the integration of biodiversity data for e-Science application and the progress on the sharing and linking of taxonomic information in the e-Taxonomy domain.

Contributions include the ongoing efforts on establishing a common names reference system (Global Names), including its components, like the Global Names Usage Bank (GNUB), relevant cross-mapping and annotation services, routines for names discovery, technical implementation models, and consortium set up. Presentations will highlight some best practices on name portal services, name resolution workflows, taxonomic concept modeling, backbone models, reference system requirements, and names licensing and attribution.

For e-Taxonomy the contributions will show recent developments on cross-platform integration and the further scoping of virtual workbenches to serve the taxonomic community and taxonomic indexing projects.

Everyone willing to contribute to this session by reporting progress on topics related to names infrastructures, name indexing, taxonomic management systems, taxonomic knowledge networks, and so on, is requested to contact the conveners. Since the number of talks will be limited, also poster presentations will be (explicitly) acknowledged as contributions to this session.

Directors

Yde de Jong, Universiteit of Finland (Joensuu)
Richard Pyle, Bishop Museum 1525 Bernice Street Honolulu, HI 96817

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop: Sharing and delivery of reusable phylogenetic knowledge

This combined symposium and workshop event aims to present and put to the test recent community progress towards effective sharing and reuse of expert phylogenetic knowledge, a key ingredient to addressing comparative research questions across biology. Even though many researchers would rather reuse a quality phylogeny than try to build it themselves, in practice it is difficult and often enough impossible to find suitable phylogenies, to evaluate their fitness for purpose, and to access them in a format suitable for analysis. To mitigate these obstacles, an interdisciplinary grassroots network has begun to develop solutions that include data standards, metadata ontologies, a decoupled architecture, and community-building hackathons. Aside from presenting the results of these efforts and showcasing diverse applications for phylogeny reuse, the event will allow participants to inform these efforts so they respond to biodiversity science needs. Finally, the event is designed to catalyze new collaborations by providing ample room for interactive demonstrations using participant-contributed research problems.

Please visit: http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/Phylogenetics/PhyloSharingWorkshop2013 for more detailed and current information.

Directors

Nico Cellinese, University of Florida
Hilmar Lapp, Duke University
Rutger Vos, NCB NATURALIS

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Biodiversity vocabulary management - outcomes of the VoMaG Task Group

This symposium will address the outcomes of the Vocabulary Management Task Group (VoMaG) established as a task group under the TDWG Technical Architecture Group (TAG). The primary goal of the symposium is to generate discussion around the recommendations of the VoMaG. As such, the VoMaG report[1] which was released in September 2013, and summarises the work of the group, is essential reading for all prospective participants in this session. Topics covered include an introduction to the VoMaG, an evaluation of the TDWG Ontologies, including recommendations for ending their uncertain status, developing a framework for managing vocabularies based on best practices, and adoption of Semantic MediaWiki as an easy-to-use platform for collaborative development and management of vocabularies. To complement the presentations on the VoMaG outcomes, we include two further presentations on vocabulary management issues. In the first, a use case on vocabulary standardisation from a project at the Museum national d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris will be described in the context of the VoMaG recommendations. In the second, some observations on the use of Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) for modelling value properties will be presented. We conclude with a general discussion on the set of recommendations proposed by VoMaG.

[1] http://www.gbif.org/orc/?doc_id=5422

Directors

Steve Baskauf, Vanderbilt University
Dag Endresen, GBIF-Norway, Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
Gregor Hagedorn, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Éamonn Ó Tuama, Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Hackathon: Use of Semantic MediaWiki for vocabulary management

A vocabulary management system must support many tasks, among them, the definition, annotation, discussion, translation and export of terms or concepts in standard formats. In particular, it should be capable of importing externally defined vocabularies to enable their re-use.

At the implementation level, a web-based platform is highly desirable to support remote collaboration. In meeting these requirements, the TDWG Vocabulary Management Task Group has proposed the use of MediaWiki^[1], the wiki engine that underpins Wikipedia, in conjunction with the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW)^[2] extension which allows data items to be tagged and queried within the wiki pages.

In this hands-on, practical session we will explore the use and advantages of Semantic MediaWiki for vocabulary management. Participants are encouraged to test how SMW can support a use case of their own, e.g., for translating an existing vocabulary or developing a new one. While the main features of SMW will be briefly introduced in the preceding session (Vocabulary Management I), we encourage prospective participants to begin their own exploration of the system beforehand at http://terms.gbif.org. In this session, we will begin with a short (5-10 min) live demonstration of the main features of the SMW interface and then act as tutors, answering questions, etc., as participants try out the system on their own laptops. As places are limited, prospective participants should indicate their interest in participating in the session by emailing Gregor Hagedorn (gregor.hagedorn at mfn-berlin.de) before Tuesday 29^th October.

^[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/

^[2] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/

Directors

Dag Endresen, GBIF-Norway, Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
Gregor Hagedorn, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Éamonn Ó Tuama, Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Workshop: Darwin Core DNA and Tissue Data Standard for the Global Genome Biodiversity Network

The Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) is a global network of well-managed collections of genomic tissue and DNA samples from across the Tree of Life. One major goal of the Network is to provide access to genome-quality samples and all related data for research. Members of the GGBN require shared standards to secure interoperability and publish information on their tissue and DNA holdings through a shared data portal. The upcoming GGBN data portal will be based on the DNA Bank Network's data portal, and will work for both BioCASe/ABCD and IPT/ DwC-A, and furthermore DiGIR providers (voucher specimens at non-GGBN institutions). DarwinCore serves as the data provision schema for many GGBN member institutions, but lacks an extension to publish DNA and tissue data. The DwC-A DNA and Tissue Extension, drafted at the 2012 TDWG Conference, was tested for review. The purpose of this work shop is to review the DwC-A DNA and Tissue Extension and ABCDDNA for the submission to TDWG as formal standards. Test case results will be reviewed and gaps will be filled.

Directors

Katherine Barker, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Gabriele Droege, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, FU Berlin
Paul Flemons, Australian Museum

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Symposium: Scholarly Data Publishing in Biodiversity: Challenges and Potentials

Free and open access to biodiversity data is crucial to take informed decisions and actions for sustainable use of biotic resources and conservation of biodiversity areas. While, in recent past use of biodiversity data in research, conservation and management activities is on rise, users often complain about the low degree of ‘fitness-for-use’ of the accessible data. Most of the times potential use of data is hampered because of lack of adequate metadata, that can demonstrate the fintness-for-use of a given dataset. To overcome this an appropriate incentivisation mechanism is essential, that can provide due credit and acknowledgement to a research groups for their efforts in authoring good metadata. In recent past a concept of ‘scholarly data publishing’ is being talked about where in both data and metadata undergo peer-review similar to other scientific publications. Pensoft publishing has launched a fresh data only journal called ‘Biodiversity Data Journal, and accepts data papers in six of its other journal titles. European aquatic biodiversity community through EU funded project ‘BioFresh’ has engaged with editors of 29 aquatic biodiversity journals to being accepting data papers. GBIF node in Columbia and South Africa are planning to kick start a journal that will publish data papers. Recently, Nature Publishing Group has announced a peer-reviewed data publishing only journal called ‘Scientific Data’. These development announces the arrival of the new data publishing era ‘Scholarly Data Publishing’. Biodiversity science and biodiversity informatics stands to gain a lot by being on the forefront of this tide

Directors

Vishwas Chavan, Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Hosted by Missouri Botanical Garden - Adapted by W.Ulate from design by Ultimedia

Username
Password
Remember me