Collections

The EU-funded project BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) supports free of charge* publications in a dedicated topical collection in the Biodiversity Data Journal, demonstrating advanced publishing methods of linked biodiversity data.

BiCIKL is dedicated to building a new community of key research infrastructures, researchers and citizen scientists by using linked FAIR biodiversity data at all stages of the research lifecycle, from specimens through sequencing, imaging, identification of taxa, etc., to final publication in novel, re-usable, human-readable and machine-interpretable scholarly articles. Achieving a culture change in how biodiversity data are being identified, linked, integrated and re-used is the mission of the BiCIKL consortium. By doing so, BiCIKL is to help increase the transparency, trustworthiness and efficiency of the entire research ecosystem.

In the Author's notes to the Editor, the authors will need to make a reference to the condition(s) their work complies with the requirements and expectations of the BiCIKL project, which are briefly outlined here. Likewise, they will need to abide by the community-agreed standards for terms, ontologies and vocabularies used in biodiversity informatics. 

The collection welcomes taxonomic and other biodiversity-related research articles, data papers, software descriptions, and methodological/theoretical papers. These should demonstrate the advantages and novel approaches in accessing and (re-)using linked biodiversity data. 

The criteria and requirements for publication are listed here. The authors need to acknowledge the BiCIKL project, Grant No 101007492 in the Acknowledgements section.

* The publication fee (APC) is waived for standard-sized manuscripts (up to 40,000 characters, including spaces) normally charged by BDJ at € 650. Authors of larger manuscripts will need to cover the surplus charge (€10 for each 1,000 characters above 40,000). See more about the APC policy at Biodiversity Data Journal, or contact the journal editorial team at: bdj@pensoft.net.

The EU-funded project BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) supports free of charge* publications in a dedicated topical collection in the Biodiversity Data Journal, demonstrating advanced publishing methods of linked biodiversity data.

BiCIKL is dedicated to building a new ...

The Italian National Recovery and Plan supports the creation of five National Centers dedicated to frontier research related to technological areas consistent with the priorities of the European research agenda and with the contents of the National Research Plan 2021-2027. One of these is the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC).

The Vision of NBFC is to promote the sustainable management of Italian biodiversity in order to improve the planet’s health and return beneficial effects, essential for all people. The general mission of the Consortium is to create an extended national network of universities, research centers, associations, and other private and societal stakeholders to take effective and immediate action to halt the loss of biodiversity and the impairment of its delivered ecosystem services while enhancing a sustainable use of biodiversity-derived resources and new job opportunities. In concrete terms, the NBFC aims at addressing interdisciplinary and frontier research and innovation activities devoted to the monitoring, conservation, restoration and valorization of Italian biodiversity.

In the context of the research action promoted by the NBFC, this topical collection aims to favor the production and sharing of knowledge of the extraordinary biodiversity of arthropods present on the Italian territory. The collection welcomes contributions presenting recent advances in the taxonomy, faunistics and ecology of any group of both terrestrial and aquatic arthropods.

The Italian National Recovery and Plan supports the creation of five National Centers dedicated to frontier research related to technological areas consistent with the priorities of the European research agenda and with the contents of the National Research Plan 2021-2027. One of these is the Nation ...

In collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers, GBIF has announced a new call for authors to submit and publish data papers on soil biodiversity in a special collection of Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). The call expands upon the partners’ successful efforts to mobilize data in 2020-2022.

Until 22 September 2023, Pensoft will waive the article processing fee (normally €650) for the first 40 accepted data paper manuscripts that meet the following criteria for describing a dataset:

• with more than 5,000 presence records new to GBIF.org in 2023
• with high-quality data and metadata
• with coverage of species/taxa occurring in soil at least at one stage of their life cycle

See full description of the call and additional resources.

In collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers, GBIF has announced a new call for authors to submit and publish data papers on soil biodiversity in a special collection of Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). The call expands upon the partners’ succes ...

In the context of the recently announced French National Plan for Pollinators and the initiation of the French Red List of Bees and Hoverflies, this topical collection aims to streamline the publicly available knowledge of the extraordinary biodiversity of bees, hoverflies, flies, butterflies and other flower-visitors from across all French territories. 

The collection welcomes contributions presenting recent advances in the taxonomy, inventory and ecology of the pollinators in France and the French overseas territories. 

As supporters of the collection, the French GDR Pollinéco and The Bee Observatory (OA) are providing partial subsidies to early-career researchers who wish to publish their data.

In the context of the recently announced French National Plan for Pollinators and the initiation of the French Red List of Bees and Hoverflies, this topical collection aims to streamline the publicly available knowledge of the extraordinary biodiversity of bees, hoverflies, flies, butterflies and ot ...

In collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers, GBIF has announced a call for authors to submit and publish data papers on Northern Eurasia in a special collection of Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ).

In correspondence with the funding priorities of this programme, at least 80% of the records in a dataset should have coordinates that fall within the priority area of Northern Eurasia, defined as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

See full description of the call and additional resources.

In collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers, GBIF has announced a call for authors to submit and publish data papers on Northern Eurasia in a special collection of Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ).

In correspondence with the funding prioritie ...

The Special issue “Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity” aims to celebrate the wide biodiversity of the Antarctic and Sub Antarctic region in the terrestrial and marine realms.

The (sub)Antarctic and Southern Ocean are host to a unique biodiversity. Due to the remoteness and harsh environment this biodiversity often remains poorly described despite similar treats as the rest of the globe.

The SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal is a community effort that supports the publication of Biodiversity data in accordance with the FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and the provisions of the Antarctic treaty System (scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available).

The Special issue “Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity” aims to celebrate the wide biodiversity of the Antarctic and Sub Antarctic region in the terrestrial and marine realms.

The (sub)Antarctic and Southern Ocean are host to a unique biodiversity. Due to the remoteness and harsh environmen ...

The German Barcode of Life initiative (GBOL) aims at creating a DNA barcode library of German organisms. The third phase, "GBOL III: Dark Taxa", focuses on little known or unknown groups of insects in Germany, in particular Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera. GBOL III: Dark Taxa is a joint project with partners from three major German natural history institutions in Bonn (Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig), Munich (SNSB–Zoologische Staatssammlung München) and Stuttgart (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart). Further partners are the University of Würzburg and the Entomological Society Krefeld. Starting from July 2020, 12 PhD students are tackling the taxonomy of selected groups of poorly known Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera using an integrative taxonomic approach that that builds on DNA barcoding and morphology but employs also other methods. Further work packages include employing HTS techniques to estimate the role of cryptic parasitoids during outbreaks of pest species, establishing a platform for using OTU based data and developing pipelines for poor-quality samples and taxonomics approaches. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant ID: 01LI1901). For additional information see https://bolgermany.de/home/gbol3/.

The German Barcode of Life initiative (GBOL) aims at creating a DNA barcode library of German organisms. The third phase, "GBOL III: Dark Taxa", focuses on little known or unknown groups of insects in Germany, in particular Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera. GBOL III: Dark Taxa is a joint project w ...

This Collection of the BDJ will report original results from recent biodiversity recording and survey work undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park, northern Vietnam, under the framework of the VIETBIO project. The issue will consists of a “main” cover paper characterizing the study area and general project approach and activities, followed by individual papers for separate higher taxa as studied during the project, and some concluding summary and outlook. The main purpose is to make primary biodiversity records openly available including several new and interesting findings for this biodiversity-rich conservation area. All individual (taxonomic) contributions with their respective primary records are expected to provide useful baselines for further taxonomic, phylogenetic, ecological, and conservation-related studies on the respective taxa, and thus will be maintained as separate datasets including separate GUIDs also for further updating. 

VIETBIO ["Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterization in Vietnam"] is a bilateral German-Vietnamese research and capacity building project focused on the development and transfer of new methods and technology towards an integrated biodiversity discovery and monitoring system for Vietnam. Dedicated field training and testing of innovative methodologies was undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park as part of and with support from the project, which led to the new biodiversity data and records to be made available in this issue.

VIETBIO is a collaboration between the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science (MfN), the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum, Free University of Berlin (BGBM), and the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (VNMN), the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE), as well as the Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB), which all institutions under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST).

The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2017 (grant ID: 01 DP17052).

More information you can find on our website: https://bioseasia.org/vietbio.

This Collection of the BDJ will report original results from recent biodiversity recording and survey work undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park, northern Vietnam, under the framework of the VIETBIO project. The issue will consists of a “main” cover paper characterizing the study area and general p ...

Omics experiments are generating large quantities of data at an ever-increasing rate due to the constantly evolving technologies in the field of biology and environmental sciences. Commonly, omics datasets are deposited into public thematic repositories, such as the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) databases  European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), GenBank and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), from where they are openly accessible. Datasets can also be described and published as data papers to receive additional visibility and citation credit as any other journal article. 

To facilitate and incentivise extended high quality metadata descriptions and scholarly publication of omics data, Pensoft has launched a new type of publication - OMICS Data Paper - in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). Authors are invited to describe their omic datasets by using the novel streamlined workflow for creating a manuscript at a click of a button from metadata deposited in ENA. Imported metadata will be automatically converted into a manuscript draft in the Arpha Writing Tool (AWT), where authors can edit and amend it with additional information and submit it for peer review and publication in BDJ. 

Alternatively, an omics data paper manuscript can be created directly in the AWT from where the data paper can be linked to any omics dataset, deposited in repositories other than ENA. 

Publication of the first 10 submitted manuscripts will be free of charge!

Omics experiments are generating large quantities of data at an ever-increasing rate due to the constantly evolving technologies in the field of biology and environmental sciences. Commonly, omics datasets are deposited into public thematic repositories, such as the International Nucleotide Sequence ...