Title Participants Abstract "Systematic Design of a Natural Sciences Collections Digitisation Dashboard" "Laura J Tilley, Matt Woodburn, Sarah Vincent, Ana Casino Rubio, Wouter Addink, Frederik Berger, Ann Bogaerts, Sofie De Smedt, Lisa French, Sharif Islam, Patricia Mergen, Anne Nivart, Beata Papp, Mareike Petersen, Celia Santos, Edmund K. Schiller, Patrick Semal, Vincent S. Smith, Karin Wiltschke" "This paper describes the design and build of a pilot Natural Sciences Collections Digitisation Dashboard (CDD). The CDD will become a key service for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections Research Infrastructure (DiSSCo) and aims to improve the discoverability of natural science collections (NSCs) held in European institutions, both digitised and undigitised. Furthermore, it will serve as a dynamic visual assessment tool for strategic decision-making, including the prioritisation of digitisation. The CDD pilot includes high-level information from nine European NSCs, covering the number of objects, taxonomic scope, storage type, chronostratigraphy (Earth Science Collections), geographical region and level of detail in digitisation. This information is structured through a standardised Collection Classification Scheme, which uses high-level categorisation to describe physical natural science collections." "Joint statement by CETAF, SPNHC and BHL on DATA within scientific publications: clarification of [non]copyrightability" "Laurence Benichou, Donat Agosti, Willi Egloff, Elisa Hermann, Mariko Kageyama, Patricia Mergen, Constance Rinaldo, Jutta Buschbom" "The EU and other states have made legislative efforts to clarify data mining in copyrightable works, but the situation remains obscure and confusing, especially in a globalised field where international legislation can contribute to opacity. The present paper aims at asserting a common position of three communities representing biodiversity sciences and data specialists on this issue and to propose common and best practice guidelines so that they become universally accepted rules. As scientific data users, we take the standpoint that scientific data are not copyrightable and, furthermore, they can be accessed, shared and reused freely. Thus, once legal access has been gained to copyrighted publications, the data within those scholarly publications can be considered to be open data that is freely extractable. This set of recommendations has been reached specifically for scientific use and societal benefits." "State of the World's Plants and Fungi, 2023." "A. Antonelli, C. Fry, David R. Smith, J. Eden, Rafaël Govaerts, P. Kersey, Eimear Nic Lughadha, Renske E. Onstein, M. S. J. Simmonds, A Zizka, J. D. Ackerman, V. M. Adams, A. Martyn Ainsworth, C. Albouy, A. P. Allen, Noris Salazar-Allen, R. Allio, T. D. Auld, William Baker, RL Barrett, J.-L. de Beaulieu, S. Bellot, N. Black, G. Boehnisch, D. Bogarín, J. D. Boyko, Peter M. J. Brown, A. Budden, P. Bureš, N. Butt, A. Cabral, Lei Cai, Josep Cano, Chi-Yen Chang, M. Charitonidou, J. H. Chau, M. Cheek, G. Chomicki, M. Coiro, Meiriele Da Silva, F. L. Condamine, D. M. Crayn, P. Cribb, A. P. Cuervo-Robayo, A. Dahlberg, Victor Deklerck, P. Denelle, K. L. Dhanjal-Adams, Irina S Druzhinina, W. L. Eiserhardt, TL Elliott, B. J. Enquist, Marcial Escudero, Manuel Sanchez Ruiz, Mike F. Fay, M. Fernandez, N. S. Flanagan, Felix Forest, R. M. Fowler, M. Freiberg, R. V. Gallagher, Ester Gaya, B. Gehrke, K. Gelwick, Olwen M Grace, Agustin Cerna-Mendoza, M. Grenié, Quentin Groom, Jan Hackel, E. R. Hagen, E. Hágsater, J. M. Halley, A.-Q. Hu, C. Jaramillo, Jens Kattge, D. A. Keith, P. M. Kirk, W Daniel Kissling, Sandra Knapp, Holger Kreft, B. G. Kuhnhäuser, I. Larridon, T. C. C. Leão, I. J. Leitch, Kare Liimatainen, Y.-W. Lim, Eve Lucas, R. Lücking, M. Luján, Zong-Long Luo, S. Magallón, B. Maitner, JI Marquez-Corro, Santiago Martin-Bravo, K. Martins-Cunha, A. C. Mashau, A. V. Mauad, O. Maurin, R. Medina Lemos, C. Merow, F. A. Michelangeli, J. C. O. Mifsud, V. Mikryukov, J. Moat, Alexandre Monro, A Muthama Muasya, Gregory M. Mueller, A. N. Muellner-Riehl, K. Nargar, R. Negrão, Nicky Nicolson, T Niskanen, Leonardo C. Oliveira, R. G. Olmstead, I. Ondo, L. Oses, E. Sánchez Gullón, Alan Paton, J. Pellicer, L. Pellissier, T. D. Pennington, Agustí Escobar, C. Phillips, S. Pironon, Hugh Possingham, Ghillean Prance, N. a. S. Przelomska, Santiago Sánchez-Ramírez, Susanne S. Renner, M. Rincon, M. C. Rivers, A.M. Andrés, Jose Romero, N. Roque, J. Rzedowski, Isabel Sanmartín, D. Santamaría-Aguilar, Luciana de Castilho Costa, E. Serpell, L. J. Seyfullah, Toral Shah, X. Shen, D. Silvestro, David A. Simpson, P. Šmarda, J. Šmerda, E. Smidt, Stephanie Smith, R. Solano-Gomez, C. Sothers, M. Soto Gomez, D Spalink, P. Sperotto, M. Sun, L. M. Suz, Jens C. Svenning, A. Taylor, Leho Tedersoo, M. Tietje, Maarten Trekels, R. L. Tremblay, R. Turner, T. Vasconcelos, P. Veselý, B. S. Villanueva, T Villaverde, M. S. Vorontsova, B. E. Walker, Z. Wang, Mark Watson, Patrick Weigelt, E. H. Wenk, J. R. S. Westrip, T. Wilkinson, S. D. Willett, K Wilson, M Winter, C. Wirth, F. J. R. Wölke, J.H. Wright, F. Zedek, D. A. Zhigila, N. E. Zimmermann, A. Zuluaga, AR Zuntini" "State of the World's Plants and Fungi, 2023." "Analysis of the Financial Sustainability Task Force: Consultation on the Progress report" "Miguel Rey Mazon , Jessica Klemeier, Vanessa Proudman, Dale Robertson , Jan Meijer, Françoise Hacque-Cosson, Lars Kaczmirek, Patricia Mergen, Arnaud Roi, Rene Belsø" "The Financial Sustainability Task Force of the EOSC Association has consulted with stakeholders of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) via a survey to obtain feedback on the paths towards financial sustainability of EOSC, contained in its Progress Report published in November 2022. The feedback will help the Task Force inform its positioning relative to the discussions on the future of EOSC post-2027, as well as indicate possible directions for the work in the remainder of the TF’s current mandate." "FAIR but not Necessarily Open: Sensitive data in the domain of biodiversity" "Patricia Mergen, Sofie Meeus, Frederik Leliaert" "In the framework of implementing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), there is still confusion between the concept of data FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable, Wilkinson et al. 2016) and the idea of open and freely accessible data, which are not necessarily the same. Data can indeed comply with the requirements of FAIRness even if their access is moderated or behind a paywall. Therefore the motto of EOSC is actually “As open as possible, as closed as necessary”. This confusion or misinterpretation of definitions has raised concerns among potential data providers who fear being obligated to make sensitive data openly accessible and freely available, even if there are valid reasons for restrictions, or to forfeit any charges or hamper profit making if the data generate revenue. As a result, there has been some reluctance to fully engage in the activities related to FAIR data and the EOSC.When addressing sensitive data, what comes to mind are personal data governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as clinical, security, military, or commercially valuable data protected by patents. In the domain of biodiversity or natural history collections, it is often reported that these issues surrounding sensitive data regulations have less impact, especially when contributors are properly cited and embargo periods are respected. However, there are cases in this domain where sensitive data must be considered for legal or ethical purposes. Examples include protected or endangered species, where the exact geographic coordinates might not be shared openly to avoid poaching; cases of Access and Benefit sharing (ABS), depending on the country of origin of the species; the respect of traditional knowledge; and a desire to limit the commercial exploitation of the data. The requirements of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as the upcoming Digital Sequence Information regulations (DSI), play an important role here. The Digital Services Act (DSA) was recently adopted with the aim of the protection of the digital space against the spread of illegal content, which sets the interoperability requirements for operators of data spaces. This raises questions on the actual definition of data spaces and how they would be affected by this new European legislation but with a worldwide impact on widely used social media and content platforms such as Google or YouTube.During the implementation and updating activities in projects and initiatives like Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library (BiCIKL), it became clear that there is a need to offer a secure data repository and management system that can deal with both open and non-open data in order to effectively include all potential data providers and mobilise their content while adhering to FAIR requirements.In this talk, after a general introduction about sensitive data, we will provide several examples in the biodiversity and natural sciences domains on how to deal with sensitive data and their management, such as recommended by GBIF. Last, but not least, we will highlight how important it is to use internationally accepted standards such as those from Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) to achieve such developments in the context of the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH) implemented by BiCIKL. Notably, by providing clear metadata about the terms of use, citation requirements and licensing, actual re-use of the data is made possible both legally and efficiently." "DiSSCo Prepare Deliverable D1.4 Report on socioeconomic impact indicators of DiSSCo and DiSSCo enabled research and research applications" "Rui Figueira, Elsa Fontainha, Sofie De Smedt, Ana Casino Rubio, Patricia Mergen, Elspeth Haston" "This Deliverable 1.4 report for DiSSCo Prepare Work Package 1 Task 1.4 recommends 29 socioeconomic impact indicators to be adopted by DiSSCo. The indicators were selected and adapted for the DiSSCo mission and services, as a result of an extensive review of recent frameworks and studies of socio-economic impact of research infrastructures. The initial review compiled a list of socio-economic impact indicators recommended or used for the assessment of research infrastructures. The report also includes the review of the analysis of impact assessments of research infrastructures and institutions analogous to the goals and domain of activity of DiSSCo. From the analysis of the scope of DiSSCo, the areas of impact, user communities and services, it was possible to identify the relevance of indicators to be adopted by the research infrastructure. Each of the 29 indicators is fully defined and described in the context of DiSSCo’s implementation. Although the indicators are all relevant and useful for DiSSCo, it is recommended that future feedback from DiSSCo stakeholders is used to further limit this list to a smaller core of indicators." "Pre-Commercial Procurement framework and European funding sources for European Research Infrastructure Consortiums: Insights from the DiSSCo ERIC development" "Gael Lymer, Frederik Leliaert, Patricia Mergen, Stefaan Pijls" "Mechanisms and sources of funding for European Research Infrastructure Consortiums (ERICs) are diverse, complex and can be challenging to identify and to use. This paper provides a roadmap for Research & Development (R&D) within the pre-commercial procurement (PCP) framework and the landscape of funding for ERICs available from the European Union with a perspective on other tracks of funding. Our objective is to offer a starting point and underline opportunities and challenges, for existing and future ERICs. The work presented in this paper results from the research carried-out for the business model of the DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) ERIC, which is currently in its transition phase and will be constructed in the following years." "DiSSCo Prepare Deliverable D4.4 - Roadmap for the partnerships project within the EU PCP framework" "Stefaan Pijls, Frederik Leliaert, Patricia Mergen, Steven Robertshaw" "This report focuses primarily on the procurement framework options needed to support Research & Development within the DiSSCo RI, the Research Infrastructure of the Distributed System of Scientific Collection. DiSSCo will work with both industrial and publ ic partners to co-create services and co-develop products such as, but not limited to, software and digitisation technology and will contract with third parties for goods and services. The DiSSCo RI will require strategic partnerships with all these actors. A clear strategy allows an organisation to both develop self-sustainability and to align its procurement process with its long term priorities and objectives, supporting partnership development, scaling up, risk mitigation, efficiency gains and building roadmaps. For this report we build on the efforts of task 4.4 ""pre commercial procurement financial structure"" of work package 4 ""business framework"" in the DiSSCo Prepare project. We worked with a technical partner (Acrosslimits) to consider how procurement frameworks have been implemented in other relevant European Research Infrastructures. Through the internal collaboration with other work packages, we gained insight into the opportunities and challenges that pre-commercial procurement (PCP) can represent for DiSSCo with perspective on other procurement types. This deliverable provides a roadmap for DiSSCo within the PCP framework, leveraging the DiSSCo Strategy developed in DiSSCo Prepare. We do this through offering perspective on funding approaches with their opportunities and challenges for both the DiSSCo Hub as well as its members and funders. We provide an indicative view on the preparation phase to PCP, as this is where the main difference will be found. The execution phases follow a defined approach of execution by the external to DiSSCo innovators, and a judging by the DiSSCo members at each round. We close with a recommendation and final conclusion based on the overall cost and complexity assessment of the considered approaches based on the listed assumptions. These assumptions have to be transferred into DiSSCo Construct, and the model updated where reality turns out different." "The Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH): A Crosspoint and Knowledge Broker for FAIR and Linked Biodiversity Data" "Lyubomir Penev, Dimitrios Koureas, Quentin Groom, Jerry Lanfear, Donat Agosti, Ana Casino, Joe Miller, Guy Cochrane, Olaf Bánki, Wouter Addink, Urmas Kõljalg, Patrick Ruch, Kristina Hristova, Boris Barov, Madeira Madeira Scauri, Sara Montinaro, Lucia Vaira, Nicola Fiore, Elizabeth Bamford, Christos Arvanitidis" "The Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH) is a web platform acting as an integration point and broker of an open, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and interlinked corpora of biodiversity data, services and knowledge. It serves the entire biodiversity research cycle, from specimens and observations to sequences, taxon names and finally to scientific publications. The strategic aim of the BKH is to support a functional and integrated biodiversity knowledge graph and an emerging new community of users. The BKH is aimed at biodiversity researchers in the widest sense, research infrastructures and publishers (Fig. 1). The BKH is the key product of the EU-funded Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library (BiCIKL) project (Penev et al. 2022). The four goals of BiCIKL and the BKH are: Improved access to open and FAIR biodiversity data; Establishing of bi-directional data linkages between infrastructures; Development of new methods and workflows for semantic publishing, harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of data in literature (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables); Testing and implementation of services through use cases and open call projects for researchers outside the project. Improved access to open and FAIR biodiversity data;Establishing of bi-directional data linkages between infrastructures;Development of new methods and workflows for semantic publishing, harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of data in literature (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables);Testing and implementation of services through use cases and open call projects for researchers outside the project.The BKH consists of several modules, such as the Home page that presents the main user groups and the benefits that the BKH provides to them. It has guidelines and protocols, such as various documents on the policies, functions, and recommendations for the users. And it has relevant projects, that use linked FAIR biodiversity data.In the core of the BKH is the FAIR Data Place (FDP), which presents novel services and tools developed over the course of BiCIKL. In the future, the FDP will also accept services for linked data provided by new contributors. The FDP consists of three sub-modules: Infrastructures and organisations: Lists the contributing organisations and research infrastructures with short descriptions and links to their data, tools and services. Research infrastructures are sorted by the main type of biodiversity data they aggregate and serve: specimens, sequences, taxon names and literature. Linked data services: A catalogue of novel services that deliver FAIR data linked between the participating research infrastructures. Examples of such services are: ChecklistBank, LifeBlock, OpenBiodiv, TreatmentBank, SIBiLS “BiodiversityPMC”, eBioDiv, SynoSpecies, PlutoF Curation Tool and others. Become a contributor application form: A formal questionnaire which serves as a basis to check the suitability of an organisation or research infrastructure to join the BKH. Part of the application form is a FAIR data checklist. Infrastructures and organisations: Lists the contributing organisations and research infrastructures with short descriptions and links to their data, tools and services. Research infrastructures are sorted by the main type of biodiversity data they aggregate and serve: specimens, sequences, taxon names and literature.Linked data services: A catalogue of novel services that deliver FAIR data linked between the participating research infrastructures. Examples of such services are: ChecklistBank, LifeBlock, OpenBiodiv, TreatmentBank, SIBiLS “BiodiversityPMC”, eBioDiv, SynoSpecies, PlutoF Curation Tool and others.Become a contributor application form: A formal questionnaire which serves as a basis to check the suitability of an organisation or research infrastructure to join the BKH. Part of the application form is a FAIR data checklist.The BKH serves as a navigation system in a universe of interconnected biodiversity research infrastructures and is open to new contributors and collaborators in accessing open data and knowledge by anybody, anywhere, at any time." "Global access to nomenclatural botanical resources: Evaluating open access availability" "Nicky Nicolson, Maarten Trekels, Quentin Groom, Sandra Knapp, Alan Paton" "Societal Impact Statement: Primary occurrence data (‘what, where, when’) enable study of species distribution and diversity, facilitating reactions to societal challenges from food security to climate change mitigation. Scientific names integrate information and are made concrete through reference to a type specimen. Research and conservation planning requires timely open access to this data. Around 2000 vascular plant species are described each year, and many are narrowly endemic and face conservation threats. Twenty-four percent of those published between 2012 and 2021 is available openly, and only 12% of taxa is represented by digitised type material served from within their native range. We make several recommendations to increase open access to this vital information to support prompt conservation action and future research. Summary: We review access to literature and type specimens, key resources for taxonomic research. Takeup of open access (OA) publishing in plant naming is analysed using the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) data (2012–2021), and online availability of specimens analysed using the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Integration of the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) taxonomy and distributional data is used to examine regional variation. We found that 23% of vascular plant names are published OA, and 41% are digitally undiscoverable: contained in bibliographic works without a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or with an unresolvable DOI. The most common OA publishing model used is ‘gold’. We also found that 30% of taxa are represented by a digitised type specimen mobilised from within the continent of their natural range and only 12% from the (more precise) country. We recommend clear article processing charge (APC) waivers for authors from low and middle income countries to better enable ‘gold’ OA and promotion of deposition repositories to better enable ‘green’ OA. Nomenclators should clearly indicate the OA status of literature and mobilise type citation data as material citations to aggregators like GBIF. Names registration systems should promote the capture of code-recommended elements such as catalogue numbers for type specimens. Digital mobilisation of specimen metadata and images from collections based in low- and middle-income countries must be accelerated to help increase in country taxonomic capacity to document and conserve plant diversity."