Hi John,

Thanks for your comments. Regarding the community of potential users: The impetus for putting this proposal together came from a workshop we ran on data interoperability for invasive species research, management and policy making. This was a meeting of about 30 scientists from the Alien Challenge COST Action and their invited guests (http://www.brc.ac.uk/alien-challenge/wg4). We are currently writing up the finding of the workshop, but rather than just complain about all the problems of data interoperability, I thought it would be good to do something about it.

The users of the establishmentMeans vocabulary are intended to be researchers of introduction pathways, with the expectation that this information will ultimately filter through to policy making on such things as import restrictions. The vocabulary has been taken from the IUCN so that should be agreeable to a wide range of users.

The controlled vocabulary for occurrenceStatus and the addition of origin are largely intended for users creating check-lists with Darwin Core. These terms are less suitable for individual occurrences. The knowledge of when an organism came to an area and whether it is still there is widely used by conservationists and those interested in alien species. Currently, Darwin Core is not very strict on its controlled vocabularies and I found it necessary to add the new term ‘origin’ to be able to separate the length of time a taxon had persisted at a site from how it had got there.

I have already received useful input from various people involved with invasive species, including Annie Simpson and Peter Desmet, but I'm curious to know what the wider biodiversity community thinks of the proposal.

Regards