Main Page
Species-ID is dedicated to publish and integrate open species descriptions and identification tools. The ultimate goal is to enable the identification of all living organisms on earth.
The project is presently in its inital phase. Its success will be determined by the contributions of many parties. To approach the goal several layers of contributions are helpful:
- Providing raw identification materials (species treatments, dichotomous, polytomous, multi-access keys, etc.) to this repository, possibly simply as a deposit in the form of an archive (e. g. zip-files).
- Providing or converting text and data to on-wiki revisable formats
- Enhancing the access and usability through restructuring, categorizing, adding semantic wiki information or tools, or adding new software extensions.
Content policy: Species-ID publishes materials under an open content policy that is compatible with other open content projects like Wikipedia or Open educational resources (OER). Unlike Wikipedia, which is dedicated to summarizing information previously published elsewhere, original and authored information may be published on Species-ID. The submission of identification datasets (e. g. in DELTA, Xper, SDD, or other formats) is especially encouraged to improve the present and future re-use of these.
Neutrality: While general pages are dedicated to neutrality, authored pages (having the authors' names in the title) may support their respective views in polite discourse. Respecting each others opinion is an essential part of participating here. See also the Charter.
This site is community-owned. Any decisions are taken by those who invest into the growing content of this site. The technical operation is separarate from the content management and is supported by a consortium of service sponsors that backs the shared biowikifarm.net on which species-ID is running – What this means.
Despite using Wikipedia-like software this is not Wikipedia. Important differences are:
- You may create authored pages as well as fully collaborative pages
- You may publish primary data and original information here
- You may provide identification software for download
- While contributors may include professional scientists, students, and amateurs, we will not support anonymous access. Following custom of science, we also usually request your real name.
- See also Using Wikipedia and Wikispecies (which explains the benefits and constraints).
If you are interested in a collaboration, please go to login and request an account (there may be a delay of 1 day until you are confirmed).
This site endorses the Principles for Open Science of Science Commons by openly publishing scientific data and using Creative Commons Licenses where the analysis of data may result in copyrighted works.
