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 submissions to the collection, the authors will need to provide a Cover Letter in the Author's notes to the Editor explaining how their manuscripts comply with the requirements and expectations of the BiCIKL project, which are briefly outlined below. 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 articles will be published for free and they need to acknowledge the BiCIKL project, Grant No 101007492 in the Acknowledgements section.