Plazi is a Swiss-based international non-profit association supporting and promoting the development of persistent and openly accessible digitalbio-taxonomic literature. Plazi is cofounder of theBiodiversity Literature Repository and is maintaining this digital taxonomic literaturerepository atZenodo to provide access toFAIR data converted from taxonomic publications using the TreatmentBank[1] service, enhances submittedtaxonomic treatments by creating a version in theXML format Taxpub,[2] and educates about the importance of maintainingopen access to scientific discourse and data. It is a contributor to the evolving e-taxonomy in the field ofBiodiversity Informatics.[3]
The approach was originally developed in a binationalNational Science Foundation (NSF) andGerman Research Foundation (DFG) digital library program to theAmerican Museum of Natural History and theUniversity of Karlsruhe, respectively, to create anXML schema modeling the content of bio-systematic literature. The TaxonX schema is applied to legacy publications using GoldenGATE,[4] a semiautomatic editor. In its current state GoldenGATE is a complex mark up tool allowing community involvement in the process of rendering documents into semantically enhanced documents.
Plazi developed ways to make distribution records in published taxonomic literature accessible through aTAPIR service that is harvested by theGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).[5] Similarly, theSpecies Page Model (SPM) transfer schema has been implemented to allow harvesting of treatments (the scientific descriptions of species and higher taxa) by third parties such as theEncyclopedia of Life (EOL). At the moment,Darwin Core Archives are used to transfer treatment data toGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility, providing with 33,623 datasets over 50% of all the datasets in GBIF.[6] If available, the treatments are enhanced with links to external databases such asGenBank,The Hymenoptera Name Server for scientific names orZooBank, the registry of zoological names.
Plazi claims it adheres to copyright law and argues thattaxonomic treatments do not qualify asliterary and artistic work. Plazi claims that such works are therefore in thepublic domain and can be freely used and disseminated (with scientific practice requiring appropriate citation).[7][8]
Plazi ID (P1992) (seeuses)