Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Symbiota2: Enabling greater collaboration and flexibility for mobilizing biodiversity data

美国的生物标本馆已经收集了超过5亿份标本，但其中只有14%被数字化;因此，我们需要大大扩展现有的工具和方法来有效地保存标本数据。该项目通过改造Symbiota解决了这一需求，Symbiota是美国研究收藏中最广泛使用的标本动员软件平台之一。Symbiota是一个在线生物多样性数据管理软件平台，整合了来自数据提供商网络的数据和图像。它帮助从766个自然历史收藏中调动了3700多万份标本记录，是创建大型协作数据社区以共享和展示生物多样性数据的最成功平台之一。美国国家科学基金会推进生物收藏数字化计划资助的项目中有74%使用Symbiota，因此它是帮助美国收藏中估计4.3亿个尚未数字化的标本数字化的关键平台。共生生物群的成功很大程度上归功于它的低学习曲线和强大的工具集，用于记录物种的出现，并将它们与图像和详细的分类描述相结合。但它的广泛使用已经产生了关于如何使其更有效的重要反馈。为了实现这一目标并帮助其未来的发展，共生体需要进行根本性的重组。该项目将把Symbiota转化为新版本Symbiota 2，以促进贡献，扩大研究用途，丰富教育推广活动，并提高可持续性。Symbiota 2将通过促进数据可视化，链接多个数据源（例如，Symbiota到Symbiota 2的转换将完全重构其代码结构，以强调模块化并提高可用性和可访问性。这一转型将通过直接管理Symbiota数据门户以及与Symbiota用户社区的协调和专门互动来实现以下目标：1）提供RESTful Web服务，以便数据可以轻松地纳入科学工作流程，2）构建插件架构，以简化新功能的开发，3）创建数据库抽象层以包括各种后端数据库管理系统，4）通过支持分析和可视化工具来增加数据效用，5）将图形用户界面（GUI）与其他处理分离，以便可以使用新的GUI，以及6）通过更容易添加新类型的数据和离线工作来增强数据收集。随着这些目标的实现，Symbiota 2将成为一个功能强大的生物多样性数据管理系统，满足开发人员、数据提供商、研究人员和教育专业人员的需求，并与其他生物多样性计划互操作。请访问该项目的主页symbiota.org以了解更多信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Biological collections in the United States have amassed over 500 million specimens but only 14% of these have been digitized; thus we need to greatly expand existing tools and methods to efficiently digitize specimen data. This project addresses this need by transforming Symbiota, one of the most widely used software platforms for mobilizing specimens in US research collections. Symbiota is an online biodiversity data management software platform that integrates data and images from networks of data providers. It has helped mobilize over 37 million specimen records from 766 natural history collections and is one of the most successful platforms for creating large collaborative data communities for sharing and displaying biodiversity data. Symbiota is used by 74% of the projects funded by the NSF Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and is thus a key platform to help digitize the estimated 430 million specimens in US collections that have yet to be digitized. Symbiota's success is largely due to its low learning curve and powerful set of tools for documenting species occurrences and integrating them with images and detailed taxonomic descriptions. But its widespread use has yielded significant feedback on how it could be made more effective. To accomplish this and aid its future development, Symbiota needs a fundamental restructuring. This project will transform Symbiota into a new version, Symbiota2, to catalyze contributions, expand research use, enrich education-outreach activities, and increase sustainability. Symbiota2 will enhance our ability to address a broad spectrum of biodiversity-related research questions by facilitating data visualization, linking multiple data sources (e.g., publications), creating better tools for data quality assessment, and monitoring data usage.The transformation of Symbiota into Symbiota2 will completely refactor its code structure to emphasize modularity and improve usability and accessibility. This transformation will achieve the following goals, derived through direct management of Symbiota data portals and concerted and dedicated interactions with the Symbiota user community: 1) Provide RESTful web services so that data can be easily incorporated into a scientific workflow, 2) Build a plugin architecture to ease the development of new features, 3) Create a database abstraction layer to include a wide variety of backend database management systems, 4) Increase data utility by supporting analytical and visualization tools, 5) Separate the Graphical User Interface (GUI) from other processing so that new GUIs can be used, and 6) Enhance the data collection by making it easier to add new kinds of data and work offline. With these goals met, Symbiota2 will be a powerful biodiversity data management system fulfilling the needs of developers, data providers, researchers, and education professionals, as well as being interoperable with other biodiversity initiatives. Please visit the project's home page at symbiota.org to learn more.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.