One of the focal points in the establishment of the EU-supported European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) is the creation of an “Internet Platform for Cybertaxonomy” This is an effort directed at the practical application of methods developed in information science and biodiversity informatics for use in revisionary taxonomy and taxonomic field work. At the same time, an integration of the participant institutions’ biodiversity informatics and IT resources is to be achieved.

During the first 18 months period of the project we will set out to analyse the pre-requisites for the establishment of co-operative processes, model the information domain and particularly the work processes, and provide first practical applications in a rapid prototyping approach addressing identified bottlenecks. On the organisational side, points that need to be addressed include forming inter-institutional coordination structures to identify parallel activities, inventory techniques and procedures used in these activities, investigate possibilities for harmonised procedures and/or techniques, and pursue the integration of the data holdings of the participating institutions. With respect to the necessary analysis of the taxonomic work process, an in-depth modelling effort of the revisionary work process and of taxonomic field work in the context of inventory and monitoring projects is carried out. In parallel, we will reach out to identify existing electronic tools for taxonomists, test their usability and, where necessary, provide developer time to improve their interoperability. The aim is to build a distributed computing platform that assist taxonomists by providing certified and tested existing labour and time saving tools in order to do taxonomy expediently and via the Web. Although the approach in the short and medium term will be strictly pragmatic and product oriented, room will be left to think about long term integration of taxonomy into a broader eScience environment.

The character of EDIT as a joint effort of large taxonomic institutions with high level support in the institutional hierarchy provides a unique opportunity to build sustainable structures – if acceptance of the tools by the taxonomic researcher can be assured. In order to achieve this, EDIT has already begun to enlist taxonomists to test, document software and provide feedback on various existing taxonomic tools.

EDIT project: http://www.e-taxonomy.eu/
EDIT Work Package 5 (Internet Platform for Cybertaxonomy): www.cybertaxonomy.org