GBIF has announced a call for proposals to draft a position paper on enabling a shared infrastructure for the development, maintenance and governance of vocabularies and ontologies for biodiversity informatics.

Request for proposals to draft a GBIF position paper on vocabularies for biodiversity informatics.

Vocabularies and ontologies are types of Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) that range from simple glossaries and dictionaries through classification schemes, taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies. As such, they are an essential foundation for data interoperability within the biodiversity informatics domain. The focus of this call is on identifying key activities that will enable GBIF and related communities of practice to move forward with such vocabularies (the term “vocabularies” is used here in a generic sense to represent the various types of KOS). Drawing on the needs of the relevant communities, the position paper will provide recommendations and an action plan on how to engage all players in creating a global infrastructure for the development, maintenance and governance of such vocabularies.

Further information on the call is available on the GBIF news site ( http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/request-for-proposals-for-a-position-paper-on-vocabularies/ http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/reques...) including instructions for submitting an application.

GBIF will provide a grant of €5,000 to support preparation of the position paper. Proposals should be sent to Dr Éamonn Ó Tuama, Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access by 14 July 2010 (email: eotuama@gbif.org).

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Éamonn Ó Tuama, M.Sc., Ph.D. ( mailto:eotuama@gbif.org eotuama@gbif.org),

Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access (IDA),

Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat,

Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, DENMARK Phone: +45 3532 1494; Fax: +45 3532 1480