Christina Flann Species 2000 October 2014 Catalogue of Life Indexing The World’s Known Species Connecting the taxonomic community and the names infrastructure communityTDWG Jönköping 2014

How Species 2000 started Frank A. Bisby “Let’s bring together the knowledge of the global taxonomic community in a single shared authoritative system on species concepts that can be used by all” © Peter Schalk, i4LifeTDWG Jönköping 2014

What is the Catalogue of Life? A Resource … an electronic synonymic species checklist, a tightly integrated taxonomic hierarchy, intended for all 1.9 M extant known species currently covers almost 1.6 M and includes over 3M scientific names from kingdom to infraspecific taxa …. constructed through international collaboration checklist and hierarchy constructed from sectors from many networked taxonomic databases around the world and integrated via scrutiny by international editorial panel © Peter Schalk, i4LifeTDWG Jönköping 2014

Hosting agreement (Naturalis, Netherlands) for Species 2000 Secretariat - Executive Secretary, Administrative & Finance Officer, facilitation of CoL e-infrastructure and basic services (5 years with roll-over) Funding by Univ. of Illinois, US for Executive Editor (Permanent) Funding for Database Manager in Philippine Office (5 years with roll-over) Hosting CoL services by third parties i.e. Cross-mapping Tool, Cardiff University, Wales (5 years with roll-over) Long Term Sustainability of CoL © Peter Schalk, i4LifeTDWG Jönköping 2014

What remains to be done? 85% is great, but need 100% asap Gaps need to be clearly identified and filled Users require fully synonymised lists Global Species Databases, GSDs represent opinion of expert taxonomic community Remaining gaps mostly have no GSD Work together with all taxonomic names initiatives to complete the CoLTDWG Jönköping 2014 © Christina Flann, 2014

What remains to be done? Continued emphasis on content Support needed for GSDs Maintain, enrich, enhance, extend, re- evaluate, combine with other approaches Utilisation of regional datasets, proto-gsds Transparency of source of all data elements Clear separation of name and conceptTDWG Jönköping 2014 © Christina Flann, 2014

Next Generation Name Resolution How can we unite the biodiversity informatics landscape to deliver names and taxonomic concepts so that users and stakeholders can answer biodiversity questions? © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Next Generation Name Resolution Nomenclators and associated registration systems Biodiversity Heritage Library and next generation publications Catalogue of Life, IT IS, regional datasets Global Names (Architecture), GN* Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GBIF © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Role of Nomenclators Re-use of name ids (RDA WG) Orthographic corrections, authorship, date, place of publication Linked name clouds of objective synonyms Registration of new names, feedback loop to CoL and GSDs for assessment before inclusion in taxonomic classification References linked via BHL, Plazi, Pensoft © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

CoL Vision CoL – meta authority, thesaurus function Frank: Global Taxonomic Architecture Including links to specimens & data assessed by taxonomists GSDs representing taxonomic expert network, provide concepts Comprehensive, definitive synonymised list Moving towards open data Attribution/Provenance (RDA WG) Feedback, reviewing and annotation processes © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Access Names are power – the keys to access data Need to ensure a seamless system for users to access all knowledge about names Downloads in standard formats: DwC-A Improve searches and matching Many cool tools available GBIF offers a logical place to eventually bring all our initiatives together and expose them to the users © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Services National Checklists (GBIF and CoL) address needs of stakeholders and users Offer a compelling reason why we need comprehensive synonymised lists If CoL is complete supplemented with GBIF distribution it includes National Checklists GN* role for missing synonymy? Look for funding: H2020 ELODINS, LinkD Consolidate ideas on paper, formalised collaboration (RDA Names WG) © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Lots of work to do together “The next challenge is unifying CoL, GN* and GBIF into a meaningful, authoritative index” Peter Schalk, Executive Secretary, Species 2000 “Aim for one meta-authority to work from and recognise that it will contain many compromises and errors, aim to make updates and changes easy” Donald Hobern, Executive Secretary, GBIF © Christina Flann, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Contribution from Donald Hobern GBIF (unable to attend)TDWG Jönköping 2014

Reorganisation of what we have Use of existing GSDs as core for species catalogue, linkages to name data in IPNI, IF, ZooBank, etc. Automated interim placement for all other names and potential species already in our existing data (from GBIF, EOL, any other collaborating catalogues, etc.) Clear marking of which parts are reviewed by experts and which automated Single point of access for querying these resources and getting consistent answers Services to add interim placeholders for other names and potential species not already included © Donald Hobern, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Community Annotation Processes Development of community annotation processes on top of the combined services All annotations considered interim proposals until reviewed & validated by GSDs or nomenclators Development of shared tools and processes allowing all partners to review, organize and validate names and species in a shared environment (moving away from heterogeneous data management) Continued ownership of responsibility for taxonomic data by existing GSDs © Donald Hobern, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Evolution of Community Structures Expanded identity management tools to allow all taxonomists and other experts to register and participate Opening-up of membership of teams for curating each GSD segment Mechanisms to grant tiered access rights to individuals for work on different taxa (who can commit something as no longer interim, etc.) © Donald Hobern, 2014TDWG Jönköping 2014

Thank you! Christina Flann Strategic Partnerships Officer, Species 2000 c/o Naturalis, Darwinweg 4, 2333 CL Leiden, Netherlands Jönköping 2014