The first BiCIKL Call for Expression of Interest for biodiversity data-related scientific proposals is open on 9 June 2022 and closes on 31 July 2022.

The BiCIKL project invites submissions of Expression of Interest (EoI) to the First BiCIKL Open Call for projects. The purpose of this call is to solicit, select and implement four to six biodiversity data-related scientific projects that will make use of the added value services developed by the leading Research Infrastructures that make the BiCIKL project.

The BiCIKL project establishes a European starting community of key research infrastructures, researchers, citizen scientists and other stakeholders in the biodiversity and life sciences based on open science practices through access to data, tools and services.

Objective of the Call for Projects

The work we foresee with the selected projects is twofold:

Address specific scientific or technical biodiversity data challenges presented by the applicants and,
Understand how the BiCIKL Community can better support the scientific questions that arise from across the biodiversity world in the future.

We need and want to assess real-world problems and make the best possible use of our data and technical capabilities. This will greatly assist in defining the long term development goals of the participating Research Infrastructures and improve the way they can technically and operationally work together to deliver greater scientific value.

What kind of support is offered?

The key feature of Transnational Access (TNA) is the provision of services to user groups from country(-ies) different from the host country of the RI installation. Access will be provided through remote transnational (no visits needed) access to data from at least two of the participating RIs requested by the user group.

The specific support provided to users will vary depending on the infrastructure and is described individually below. Broadly speaking, it is foreseen that support will include the in-kind provision of mostly virtual services, free of charge to the successful applicant. These services may include:

assisting with access to data (for instance via large or complex queries, including Linked Open Data and SPARQL)
assisting with access to collections and specimen data
data management and archiving or support with the use of complex bioinformatics tools (sequence assembly, clustering and annotation)
publications using semantically interlinked data between several RIs in the Biodiversity Data Journal
automatic text and data mining and annotation pipelines for full-text articles with semantic search engines
provide access to liberated data from publications in formats that allow further annotation or text and data mining
support of data mobilisation, data quality and data enrichment measures.

There will be a limited possibility for physical access to some of the participating collections, however, travel and accommodation costs will not be funded.

Eligibility of the project proposals

Proposals must address a topic of relevance to biodiversity research, in its broadest sense, although the final scope may narrow this to a particular area, depending on the skill sets available to the project. Proposers may wish to review the pilot project web pages (see below) which give a flavour of the type of project BiCIKL will be able to address.
Proposals must include data and services arising from at least 2 of the infrastructures that are represented in the BiCIKL project (See BiCIKL web site), as this is a core aim of the BICIKL community (i.e. to link diverse data types together in new ways)
Proposals must be submitted by a bona fide researcher, employed through a recognised scientific organisation in any country world-wide.
Whilst we welcome proposals from outside the European Union, ultimately we will only select a maximum of one such project.
Submission of more than one proposal with the same lead(s) is not excluded.
Work included in a proposed BiCIKL study must be significantly different from work funded by other sources although it may build on work from previous funding.
There is no scope for the project proposers, or their institute, to receive funding. The projects should describe work that can be done on their behalf by the BiCIKL partners.
Services supplied as part of the project must be used by the applicant before the end of the BiCIKL project itself.

Lestid Damselflies: linking digital data sets, treatment materials citations, collections databases, and phylogenies, to enhance data exchange

Linking type specimens to the names they typify for the plant genus Solanum

Interactions of taxa based on public DNA sequences in INSDC (NCBI, ENA, DDBJ) databases

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APPLICATION PROCESS

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

BICIKL-SUPPORTED PUBLICATIONS BASED ON LINKED BIODIVERSITY DATA

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.

Fill in here your Expression of Interest

Open Call for Projects

The first BiCIKL Call for Expression of Interest for biodiversity data-related scientific proposals is open on 9 June 2022 and closes on 31 July 2022.

Objective of the Call for Projects

What kind of support is offered?

Eligibility of the project proposals

Example projects

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