Collections

The ReNature RIO Collection will host key outputs relating to the sustainable use of biodiversity, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning, green infrastructure and ecosystem service assessments across rural-urban gradients, equitable access to the benefits derived from nature in cities and socio-environmental justice, payments for ecosystem services, and designing nature-based solutions. Reports from workshops attended by students, early career researchers and policymakers from all over the world will accumulate further empirical knowledge on the ReNature subjects. This Collection will continue to be developed further as the ReNature project continues to promote open innovation whilst effectively engaging communities in the co-development and exchange of knowledge for nature-based solutions implementation.

Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal) invites submissions of research outcomes - especially early and brief results - relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic in light of the unprecedented health emergency and the scale of its worldwide impact on society, industry and economics. Accepted papers will be published free of charge in the special collection.

By means of Open Science, we aim to contribute with real-time findings and data to the efforts of scientific teams, experts and other decision-makers across the globe, in order to minimise the damage and eventually bring the end to the current crisis, and even more importantly, prevent similar situations in the future. Published research ideas and brief results are also expected to bring up crucial discussion, thereby facilitating actions and collaborations in the fight against devastating health emergencies.

Especially encouraged are submissions focused on the long-term effects of COVID-19. Considered are publications across disciplines, including medicine, ethics, politics, economics etc. at a local, regional, national or international scale. Accepted publication types include: Research articles, Research Idea, Case Study, Clinical Case Study, Data Paper, Forum Paper, Methods, Questionnaire, R Package, Software Description, Workshop Report, Project Report, Research Poster, Research Presentation, Short Communication, Single-media Publication (e.g. infographics), Data Review.

We also encourage publication of research ‘bundles’, where conventional papers are published along with raw research outputs (e.g. data, case studies, presentations, etc.), to better contextualise the work and facilitate further contribution by other scientists.

This collection hosts outputs from the FP7-funded EU project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON). The project proposes an innovative approach in terms of integration of biodiversity information systems from on-ground to remote sensing data, for addressing policy and information needs in a timely and customized way.

The Path2Integrity project, financed by the EU Horizon 2020, advocates for emphasising the virtues of Research Integrity and strengthening the relationship between science and society in the rapidly changing research landscape. By designing and implementing rotatory role-playing and role-models, the project will maximise the quality and societal impact of research and foster Research Integrity by educating the next generation. Within the three-year research and innovation programme, dialogical trainings will pave the way towards achieving enhanced and successful educational practices and learning methods targeted at students and young researchers, as well as everyone directly or indirectly involved in research, including educators and senior researchers.

Addressing today’s global environmental challenges requires access to significant quantities of data. This holds especially true for the natural sciences, where one rich data trove remains unearthed: The European scientific collections. These jointly hold more than 1.5 billion objects, representing 80% of the world’s bio- and geo-diversity. With only 10 % of these objects digitised, their information remains vastly underused, thus impeding potential applications of this critical scientific resource.

The EU-funded ICEDIG project – “Innovation and Consolidation for Large Scale Digitisation of Natural Heritage” - aims to support the implementation phase of the new Research Infrastructure DiSSCo (“Distributed System of Scientific Collections”) by designing and addressing the technical, financial, policy and governance aspects necessary to operate such a large distributed initiative for natural sciences collections across Europe. This collection of articles highlights the major outputs of the ICEDIG project over the last three years (January 2018 to March 2020).

European natural history collections play a critical role in mapping a sustainable future for ourselves and the natural systems on which we depend. Since 2004 the EC funded SYNTHESYS programme has been supporting this community, underpinning new ways to access and exploit natural science collections, harmonising collections policy and funding collections-based research for more than 4000 scientists.

SYNTHESYS+ is the fourth iteration of this programme, running from February 2019 to January 2023.  This growing collection of articles highlights major outputs from SYNTHESYS+ over the four year of activity, covering topics such as our new digitisation on-demand service, the construction of a European Loans and Visits System (ELViS) and a new data processing platform (the Specimen Data Refinery), applying artificial intelligence to speed up the digital mobilisation of natural history collections.

This collection hosts outcomes from the ‘Soil Science & Archaeo-Geophysics Alliance’ (SAGA), an international research network funded by the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) for four years (from 26th October 2018 until 25th October 2022) as COST Action SAGA (CA17131).  SAGA is developing, promoting and facilitating scientific activities bringing together geophysics and soil science with the overall goal of maximising interpretation of geophysical data for archaeological investigations. The collection includes SAGA’s proposal and annual reports on scientific activities (workshops, training schools, short-term scientific missions and Conference Grants) carried out by its members and external participants.

This collection hosts contents of the PhD project of Viktor Senderov dedicated to the Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management system. It will deal with novel ways for publishing, visualizing and dissemination of biodiversity and biodiversity-related data. This PhD project is part of the BIG4 network.