In addition to the application for the open call projects, there is a possibility to publish novel types of articles demonstrating (re)-usage of linked biodiversity data in dedicated article collections in the Biodiversity Data Journal (Impact Factor: 1.225, Contact: bdj@pensoft.net).
Such publications will be published for free, if the first or corresponding author works in a low- or lower middle-income country, according to the Worldbank classification. Researchers from upper-middle and high income countries will benefit from a 65% discount, which reduces the Article Processing Charge to €220.
Article collections may include up to 30 published articles. All articles need to mention the BiCIKL project, Grant No 101007492 in the Acknowledgement section.
Researchers will learn to formalise their narratives by using community agreed standards for terms, ontologies and vocabularies. Also, researchers will be asked to use explicit persistent identifiers where these exist. Research questions based on such, semantically enriched data, are for example:
- How linking taxa or OTUs in my study to external data will contribute to a better understanding of the functions and regional/local processes within faunas/floras/mycotas or biotic communities;
- How my and other researchers' data and narratives (e.g. specimen records, sequences, traits, biotic interactions, etc.) can be re-used to support more extensive and data-rich studies;
- How to streamline taxon descriptions and inventories including such based on genomic and barcoding data;
- How general conclusions, assertions and citations in my article can be expressed in a formal, machine-actionable language;
- Others, taxon- or topic-specific research questions that will benefit from richer, semantically enhanced FAIR data.
Conditions for publication and article types
- Manuscripts must use data from at least two of the BiCIKL’s partnering Research Infrastructures. Involving data from research infrastructures that are not part of BiCIKL is highly welcome.
- Taxonomic papers (e.g. descriptions of new species) must contain persistent identifiers for the holotype, paratypes and the majority of the specimens used in the study.
- New species descriptions using import of data associated with a particular Barcode Identification Number (BIN) direct from BOLF into the ARPHA Writing Tool are encouraged.
- Direct import of individual specimen records into manuscripts from BOLD, GBIF or iDigBio is strongly encouraged as well.
- Hyperlinked in-text citations of taxon treatments from Plazi’s TreatmentBank and hyperlinking of other terms of value to external resources are highly welcome.
- Tables that list gene accession numbers, specimens and taxon names, should conform to the Biodiversity Data Journal’s guidelines.
- Theoretical or methodological papers on linking of FAIR biodiversity data are eligible for the BiCIKL collection if they provide examples and use cases.
- Data papers or software descriptions are eligible if they use data from the BiCIKL’s Research Infrastructures or describe tools and services that facilitate access to and linking between FAIR biodiversity data.