Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Request for Proposals

General

• For information about the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and its Work Programme, see www.gbif.org

ELIGIBILITY

• Open to individuals associated with and on behalf of any institution, recognized international organization, or partnerships among such institutions and/or organizations.

SUPPORT INFORMATION

• Type of support: Seed money, intended to stimulate rapid progress in making biodiversity data and taxonomic names of organisms available via the Internet, in support of the GBIF Work Programme.
• Estimated number of supported projects: Approximately 15 – 20 projects in each of two competitions:

· Digitisation of Natural History Collections (DIGIT), and

· Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms (ECAT).

Details for each area are given below.

• Amount of GBIF support per project: Up to 20% (to a maximum of US$50,000) of the total project cost. The other 80% of costs may be made up through such items as

· funds from non-GBIF sources to be or previously spent on the project

· salaries of people involved in the project that are paid by non-GBIF funds (to a percentage equal to the percentage of their working week spent directly on the project)

· volunteer time spent directly on the project calculated at an hourly wage equivalent

· in-kind support of the project (donation of hardware, software, travel costs, etc.)

· waiver of overhead costs normally charged by institutions

PROPOSAL PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

· Pre-proposals are due at GBIF Secretariat on or before 28 February 2003. Full proposals should be submitted only upon request. If requested, full proposals will be due at the Secretariat on or before 2 May 2003.

· All pre-proposals and full proposals must

· be written in English,

· be submitted electronically, using RTF or PDF format, to proposals@gbif.org, and

· include a budget that is calculated in US dollars.

Pre-proposals

· Project Summary – an abstract of the pre-proposal (no more than 200 words)

· Project Description – a brief description of the proposed project (no more than three pages) that addresses each of the following items:

· the proposed product, which must be completed no more than 18 months after receipt of the seed money;

· the human and institutional infrastructure of the project,

· how the proposed product will be made publicly available;

· how the project will deal with the issues of data compatibility, interoperability and community standards;

· institutional support and potential partnerships if applicable.

· Preliminary project budget – A one-page preliminary project budget (may include salaries or wages, travel, equipment and supplies, and other [must be explained]) that shows how GBIF’s 20% support would be spent, and how that support fits together with the other 80% of the project costs (please note the description of allowable cost-share items, above). Clearly indicate budget items for which GBIF funds would be used.

Full Proposals (to be submitted only if invited)

· Project Summary – an abstract of the proposal (no more than 200 words)

· Project Description – a description (no more than ten pages)of the project management strategy, which is to include the items listed for pre-proposals, as well as plans for

· project milestones and timeline;

· the technical and human resources necessary to complete the project,

· appropriate institutional support and partnerships,

· both short and long term information management strategies for sustainability,

· an estimate of cost per database record or other measurable subunit of the product as a way to indicate efficiency;

· commitment to use of existing data standards,

· risk assessment, and

· documentation and dissemination of the ‘lessons learned’ as a contribution to the development of best practices.

· Project budget – Two budgets should be submitted:

· one showing the uses to which GBIF’s 20% project support will be put (may include salaries or wages, travel, equipment and supplies, and other [must be explained]), and

· another showing how the other 80% of the project costs will be covered (please note the description of allowable cost-share items, in “Amount of GBIF support per project” above).

· Letter(s) of institutional commitment to the project.

TIMELINE FOR REVIEW OF PROPOSALS AND TRANSFER OF SUPPORT

14 Jan 2003	Request for proposals (RFP) distributed
28 Feb 2003	Pre-proposals due at GBIF Secretariat
5 Mar 2003	Pre-proposals sent to GBIF Science Subcommittees for review
19 Mar 2003	Reviews due at GBIF Secretariat
28 Mar 2003	Full proposals requested
2 May 2003	Full proposals due at GBIF Secretariat
5 May 2003	Full proposals sent to reviewers
~26 May 2003	Review committee meets to discuss proposals
2 June 2003	Programme Officers contact successful proposers

PRINCIPLES BY WHICH PROPOSALS WILL BE REVIEWED

· Successful projects will support the GBIF philosophy by:

· Demonstrating a commitment to making the resulting data, software tool(s) or protocol(s)/procedure(s) freely available in an ongoing manner (that is, during the project, not just at the end).

· Addressing the issues of data compatibility and interoperability by adopting and utilizing recommended GBIF data standards.

· Successful projects will have an identifiable and measurable outcome or product, which will have a demonstrable benefit to science and society.

· Conflict of interest and the appearance thereof will be avoided in the review process. Persons involved in any way with a project that is the subject of a proposal to DIGIT may not review proposals to DIGIT; likewise, persons involved in any way with a project that is the subject of a proposal to ECAT may not review proposals to ECAT.

· Reviews will be based solely on the criteria listed in this RFP for each Programme. Proposals must be carefully written to meet the criteria, and reviewers are restricted to evaluating the proposals specifically against those criteria and not on, for instance, special knowledge of a project.

· All reviews, of both pre-proposals and full proposals, will be anonymous and confidential.

PROPOSAL HANDLING AND REVIEW PROCEDURES

1. This request for proposals (RFP) for DIGIT & ECAT will be distributed by GBIF Secretariat via electronic and print media on or before 14 January.
2. Pre-proposals received by GBIF Secretariat on or before 28 February will be scanned for compliance with the criteria of the RFP; pre-proposals that do not directly address the criteria will be declined immediately, as will submissions arriving after 28 February.
3. Compliant pre-proposals will be sent to the GBIF Science Subcommittees for review on or before 5 March. DIGIT Subcommittee member(s) who is/are involved with a proposed DIGIT project will not receive DIGIT proposals for review; ECAT Subcommittee member(s) who is/are involved with a proposed ECAT project will not receive ECAT proposals for review.
4. Subcommittee members will send their reviews to GBIFS on or before 19 March.
5. Programme officers will compile reviews and, by 28 March, request full proposals from those projects that received the most favourable reviews. The number of full proposals invited will be approximately 1.5 to 2 times as many as the number of projects that will be supported.
6. Programme officers will convene review committees to review the full proposals. They will solicit names of potential reviewers from the Science Subcommittees.
7. Programme officers will contact potential proposal review committee members and send membership committee lists to the Science Subcommittees for comment.
8. GBIF Secretariat arranges meeting place and travel for proposal review committee members, once approved.
9. GBIF Secretariat will receive full proposals on or before 2 May and distribute them to the review committees on or before 5 May.
10. Review committees meet to discuss the proposals during the week of 26 May and make recommendations regarding them to the Secretariat.
11. Secretariat will select proposals to be funded. Programme officers will contact successful proposers during week of 2 June.
12. When complete, this procedure will be evaluated to assess lessons learned and develop best practice for future years.

DIGITISATION OF NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTION DATA

(DIGIT)

Programme Officer: Larry Speers

Synopsis of Programme: The DIGIT programme of GBIF, in its first year, is concentrating on the digitisation of the world’s natural history collections, including those in natural history museums, herbaria, living organism collections, etc., and exploring technologies to make the resulting digitised data readily and easily available via the internet so it can be analysed and integrated in new and innovative ways. In future years, the digitisation of additional kinds of primary data that document species occurrence will be included.

Proposals should address one of the following DIGIT priority areas.

• Completion of the work needed to make currently digitised label information associated with natural history collection specimens, publicly accessible using common data standards and addressing the issues of interoperability.

In support of GBIF’s goal to demonstrate the value and utility of making the data associated with the specimens in the world’s natural history collections easily and freely accessible, projects that can rapidly make large numbers of scientifically valuable specimen-based records available, with relatively small amounts of investment, will be given priority. While there are hundreds of thousands of specimen records currently accessible on the internet, there are also numerous already existing databases that are not electronically available due to problems such as a lack of quality assessment and quality control, inadequate geo-referencing and/or the need to migrate records into modern interoperable database formats. Rapid progress in increasing the number of specimen records accessible on the Internet can therefore be made by bringing these existing data stores on-line.

• Development of new and innovative approaches to the capture and interpretation of specimen label information, the geo-referencing of locality information or the development of community resources that facilitate these processes.

Present ‘bottlenecks’ in the digitisation effort are the time consuming and costly aspects of data capture, data cleansing and geo-referencing. New projects that will develop innovative approaches to rapid and accurate data capture, data parsing, and/or the geo-referencing of specimen or observational locality data will be considered. Community-based approaches to these problems will be given preference.

• Electronic cataloguing and imaging of type specimens.

The digitising of type specimen information, including digital images, and making this information easily available to the systematic community is a priority for the DIGIT work program. It would be expected that these projects would not only develop electronic catalogues of types and associated high quality digital image databases of this material, but also make this information available on the Internet through searchable and interoperable interfaces based on emerging community standards. Documentation of new and innovative approaches to speed up the imaging process while assuring quality information would also be advantageous.

Additional Review Criteria

In addition, all of the proposals will be evaluated with respect to their:

• Emphasis on data-sharing with countries of origin
• Components for training and capacity building, especially potential for long term capacity building and training of curators and technicians in all aspects of the specimen digitisation process, in particular, where possible, training of staff from partner institutions in developing countries
• Potential for the earliest possible access to large data sets
• Potential for networking and building increased ‘Natural History Collections Community’ collaboration
• Potential for international collaboration
• Potential for leveraging additional long term funding to support the specimen digitisation process
• Potential for testing and documenting digitisation 'Best Practices'

• Linkage with existing projects (including projects with a ECAT aspect)

ELECTRONIC CATALOGUE OF THE NAMES OF KNOWN ORGANISMS (ECAT)

Programme Officer: Per de Place Bjørn

Synopsis of Programme: For the global enhancement of biological research and resource management, a central file of the names applied to the organisms of the Earth is needed. This file or data store will have to be freely accessible to everybody at any time and should provide the user with reliable data, organised in a structured manner. A reliable file of names, synonymies and classification can serve as a resource to the world’s biologists and with time, the index may seek endorsement as an authority file for taxonomy. Moreover, in order to make the integration of data in the GBIF Network possible, a computerized index of names is essential.

Although formal agreements have not been made between GBIF/ECAT and any other organisation, it is the intent of the ECAT Work Programme that such agreements will be established in order to make the large amount of already compiled names data (here understood as the product "The Catalogue of Life [CoL]") available through the GBIF Names Service.

Proposals should address one of the following ECAT priority areas.

• Complete projects that are close to being ready to add to ECAT/CoL.

Numerous projects - large and small - are currently building lists and databases of names for organisms. The geographic and taxonomic scopes of these projects are multiple and the level of thoroughness with regards to incorporation of synonyms and systematics is varied. However, any list of names that meets a certain level of standard and quality control may be fitted into the datasets available to ECAT/CoL Names Service. For the quick build up of these datasets it will be advantageous to incorporate such datasets that are close to being completed or are ready to be incorporated into an overall global data store. In addition to finishing the addition of names to a dataset, completion of the database project may also encompass the modification of the data structure in order to meet the requirements for connecting the database to a network of databases or in other ways producing means for connecting the database to others.

• Contribute to a global species database (GSD) by creating local or partial lists of names

Ongoing efforts to create GSDs for a large number of taxonomic groups are forming a large contribution to the global store of names data that is likely to become available to the ECAT/CoL Names Service. Such GSD projects might benefit from localized additions in the form of lists of all organisms of a given taxon appearing in a certain area. Needless to say, such local projects need to demonstrate that they are coordinated with the larger projects to which they wish to contribute.

• Create GSDs for organism groups not yet part of ECAT/CoL Names Service

There are still many large gaps in the taxonomic checklist of the world’s taxa. Any major group of organisms will form a natural object for a large scale checklist project.

• Start up community-building among taxonomists who work with organisms that have no current taxonomic treatment

Not all groups of taxa have a flourishing and well-connected network of specialists devoted to them. For a large part of the world's organisms the experts may exist, but their contribution to the global understanding of their organisms’ taxonomy is limited because no community exists within which their taxonomic knowledge can be shared and maintained. Attempts to encourage such networking with the object of creating names lists are eligible for support.

Additional Review Criteria:

• Likelihood to produce results within a limited timeframe, and potential for the earliest possible access to large data sets
• Feasibility
• Cost-effectiveness -- low cost per name
• Collaboration among institutions and/or organisations
• Potential for networking and building collaborative networks of taxon specialists, with potential for training and capacity-building
• Linkage with existing projects (including projects with a DIGIT aspect)