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1. Scratchpad virtual
research environments:
sharing, linking and publishing
biodiversity data the ViBRANT way
Vince Smith1, Dave Roberts1 & Lyubomir Penev2
1. Natural History Museum, London
2. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia, Bulgaria
2. Our informatics grand challenge…
“Link together evolutionary
data… by developing
analytical tools and proper
documentation and then
use this framework to
conduct comparative
analyses, studies of
evolutionary process and
biodiversity analyses”
Cyndy Parr, Rob Guralnick, Nico
Cellinese and Rod Page. TREE.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2011.11.001
3. Our informatics grand challenge…
“Link together evolutionary
data… by developing
analytical tools and proper
documentation and then
use this framework to
conduct comparative
analyses, studies of
evolutionary process and
biodiversity analyses”
Cyndy Parr, Rob Guralnick, Nico
Cellinese and Rod Page. TREE.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2011.11.001
This requires data, information
& knowledge to be…
• Digital
Not printed paper
• Openly accessible
Not behind barriers
• Linked-up
Not in silos
4. Most of our output is not digital, open or linked
•
•
•
•
•
•
15-20k new spp. described annually (2M total)1
30k nomenclatural acts (12M total) 1
20k phylogenies (750k total)2
31k taxa sequenced (360k taxa total)3
800k BioMed papers (40M total pp. of taxonomy) 4
Countless specimens, images, maps, keys…
Typically generated by small
communities for “local” research
projects
Figures from 1) Zhang, Zootaxa 2011 4, 1-4; 2) Web-of-Science; 3) Genbank and 4) PubMed.
6. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
What are Scratchpads?
• Hosted websites for biodiversity data
• Virtual research & publication platform
• Completely open access & open source
• Modular & flexible
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
7. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
What Scratchpads are not!
• A single biodiversity database
• Restricted thematically, geographically or taxonomically
• A tool just for taxonomists
• Owned or controlled by anyone other than the data creator
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
8. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
How are Scratchpads funded?
2007
2011
2014
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
&
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
9. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Scratchpads
Taxonomy & Literature
Lice, mosquitos, freeloader flies, ...
(rapid upload and management of names, synonyms & bibliographic data)
Characters, Phylogeny & Specimens
Termites, bryozoa, ...
(character matrices exporting to SDD and Nexus format, phylogenies, specimen records & maps)
biodiversity online
7000
6000
5000
4000
Sites
Users
Active Users
400
300
3000
200
2000
100
Taxon descriptions & Publications
1000
50
Sites
20
eJournals
European Mosquito Bulletin, Phasmid Studies, ...
(submission, review & dissemination of articles)
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
Dragon trees, nanno fossils, cockroaches, fungi, polychaetes, ...
(rapid upload, annotation & display of images)
500
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
ViBRANT
Scratchpads 2
Users
Freeloader Flies, fungus gnats, ...
(publication of Scratchpad data in the ZooKeys journal and export to Encyclopedia of Life)
Image Galleries
Societies, Organisations & Projects
ICZN, GBIF, Sampled Red List Index for Plants, Global Plants Initiative ...
(space for data collection, services, discussion & organisation)
-infrastructure
10. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Training
& outreach
Support
services
ViBRANT Goals
Vision
Connecting the people, data & science of
biodiversity
http://vbrant.eu
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
Controlled
vocabulary
Networking
Training
Standards
Mobilisation
Sociology
Data
aggregation
Field
recording
GBIF
integration
Citizen
science
Position
Open & sustainable development of a
federated network of biodiversity
informatics infrastructures
Mission
Facilitate the mobalisation, sharing,
reuse and publication of biodiversity data
Data
standards
Visualisation
Scratchpads
Virtual Research
Environment
Scratchpad
Phylogeny
tools
hosting
Bioclimatic
modelling
Software integration
Identification
tools
Matrix data
editor
Data
publishing
Service
Data
Publishing
Manuscript
publishing
Sustainability
Communal
literature
Research
Literature
mark up
Architecture
Literature
Data mining
-infrastructure
11. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Taxonomic Concept
Schema XML
Nexus
Newick
CSV/tab
Excel file
EoL Transfer schema (SPM)
SDD, Lucid,
DwCA
Nexus
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
XML
CSV, XLS,
RDF
Microsoft Word
.DOC, TXT
-infrastructure
12. ViBRANT
What can Scratchpads do?
Virtual Biodiversity
• Taxon pages (generated from tagged content)
• Distribution maps (from specimens and TDWG regional distributions - Brummitt, 2001)
• Specimen records
• Bibliography management
• Images, video and sound (bulk import)
• Excel spreadsheet import
• Tabular data editing & Character matrixes
• Custom content
• User management
• Custom webforms
• Analytics
• Darwin Core Archive export (links to eMonocot Portal and EOL)
• EOL data import (taxonomy, species information)
• GBIF Map integration
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
16. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
ISSN 1314-2828 (online) ISSN 1314-2836 (print)
1. Define the
publication
A peer-reviewed open-access journal
Biodiversity
D ata Journal
Articles
Launched to accelerate biodiversity data journal
Bibliographies
2. Enter
metadata
Occurrence
3. Select taxa
& content
1t 2011
Taxon
treatments
Plazi
http://www.pensoft.net/biodiversitydata
4. Organise
manuscript
Editor-in-Chief: VINCENT SMITH
Natural History Museum, London, UK
Taxon
names
5. Submit to
journal
I . P . N . I
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
17. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Acknowledgements
• Scratchpad technical development
- Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Ed Baker, Alice Heaton & Katherine Boulton
• Scratchpad outreach
- Laurence Livermore & Dimitris Koureas
• E-Monocot
- Paul Wilkin & the Kew team, Charles Godfray & the Oxford team
• ViBRANT
- Vince Smith, Dave Roberts & Lucy Reeve
• Our 7,000+ users
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
-infrastructure
18. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Thank you for your
attention.
Any questions
e-mail: enquiries@vbrant.eu
e-mail: scratchpad@nhm.ac.uk
http://vbrant.eu
SEVENTH FRAMEWORK
PROGRAMME
http://scratchpads.eu
-infrastructure