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ScratchpadsVirtual Research Environments
for taxonomic and biodiversity related data
Reading, 27-02-2013
• 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 and datasets
Our current taxonomic data production
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.
On the other hand:
Estimates of
7.5 million species
still undescribed1
1How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? Mora C et al.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127
Expected volume
of taxonomic and
biodiversity data
Need of extracting,
aggregating and linking
data on a global level
The four nodes of data workflow
1. We collect and generate data
2. We curate, link and structure data
3. We analyse data
4. We publish data
Data curation
Data analysis
Data publishing
The four nodes of data workflow
Data collection &generation
What are the
bottlenecks
in the workflow?
Data curation
Data analysis
Data publishing
What we need is…
Data collection &generation
aseamless
workflow
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 (e.g. paywalls)
• Linked-up Not in silos
“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”
To achieve this…
What are Scratchpads?
Hosted websites for biodiversity data
Virtual research & publication platform
Completely open access & open source
Modular & flexible
What are Scratchpads?
development of online research communities
facilitate
standardized environment of entering and curating data
through
sharing and interlinking
that allow
dissemination of research products
and
A Scratchpad is a website that holds data for you and your community
The Scratchpads concept
Your data External data & services
Taxa(Classifications, taxon profiles, specimens, literature, images, maps, phenotypic, genotypic
& morphometric datasets, keys, phylogenies)
ProjectsConservation Regions Societies
Examples of use:
Major integrated projects
• Online resource for monocot plants
• Collaboration between Kew, Oxford University and NHM
• Data to be open and usable by other scientists
Major integrated projects
• 21+ open community sites and growing
• Over 45 internationally collaborating scientists
• Site data feeds into a “Portal”
Site List: http://about.e-monocot.org/list-emonocot-scratchpads
Major integrated projects
• Retrieve information on any Monocot plant
• Rich downloadable data
• Identification keys
• Model example of linked attributed data
eMonocot Portal: http://e-monocot.org/
65000 unique visitors/month
Per month unique visitors to Scratchpads sites
464 Scratchpads Communities
by 6,407 active registered users
covering 52,661 taxa
in 559,488 pages.
Are Scratchpads sustainable?
In total more than
1,200,000 visitors
Are Scratchpads sustainable?
2007 2011 2014
ViBRANTVirtual Biodiversity Research
& &
Other grants in the pipelineProposals?
Classification term oriented system
Biologicalclassifications
Non-biologicalclassifications
Taxonomies Hierarchical controlled vocabularies
The main features
Bibliography management
Faceted browsing
An inbuilt Bibliography manager
Taxon tagging and free keywords
Import from and export to all major formats
The main features
Specimen/Observation data
Linked to images and georeferenced
Annotated full specimen/observation records
The main features
Distribution maps
Google maps based
Data layers
Occurrence data
Distribution dataTDWG regions
GBIF data
The main features
Character matrices – Key construction
Quantitative or qualitative characters
Auto generation of keys
Taxon based matrices [Specimens based character matrices]
The main features
Working groups
Forums
Blog entries
Webforms
Newsletters
RSS syndication
Inbuilt comments
Enhanced communication tools
The main features
analytical tools
OBOE service
i.a.
Ecological informatics,
Phylogenetics,
Sequence alignment
The main features
What will BDJ publish?
• Single taxon treatments and nomenclatural acts
• Local or regional checklists• Sampling reports and occasional
inventories• Habitat-based checklists and inventories• Ecological and biological observations of
species and communities?• Single identification keys • biodiversity-related databases, including
genomic, ecological and environmental data (data papers)
• Biodiversity-related software tools
Allow submission of
datasets for publication
without reformatting and restructuring
Working in a single environment
based on standardised XML schema
XMLFigures and Tables
Keys
References
Texts
The publication module
Author names and affiliations
Taxon descriptions
Specimen data
The data workfl ow
MANUSCRIPT PUBLISHED(XML, PDF)
PENSOFT JOURNAL SYSTEM (PJS 2.0)
XML submission
SCRATCHPADS
Com
mun
ity
Taxon namesOccurrence datadatasetsArchive Taxon treatments
Plazi Wiki
Scratchpads are an integrated system to
Enter, Curate, Mark-up, Link and Publish data
taxonomic workflowin a single virtual environment
Scratchpads technical development
- Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Ed Baker, Alice Heaton & Katherine Bouton
Scratchpads outreach
- Laurence Livermore, Isa van deVelde & Dimitris Koureas
e-Monocot
- Paul Wilkin & the Kew team, Charles Godfray & the Oxford team
ViBRANT
- Vince Smith, Dave Roberts & Lucy Reeve
Pensoft
- Lyobomir Penev and the Pensoft team
Our 7000 users
Acknowledgements
Help & Support
• In-site Support
• Wiki
• Training Courses (12 in 2012)
• Ambassadors Programme
• Embedded Issues Queue
• Sandbox Site
http://help.scratchpad.eu