News
The third session of the OBIS Executive Committee (OBIS-EC) was held between 23-25 June 2020 as an online meeting and was attended by 22 participants (including 11 members of the OBIS Steering Group). The secretariat and the chairs of the various OBIS task teams and project teams were asked to report on the status of their activities of the 2020 work plan and the committee was asked to provide feedback and guidance on the further implementation of the work plan. The first half of 2020, and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, saw a lot of activities. OBIS celebrated its 20th Anniversary, it changed the name to Ocean Biodiversity Information System, the database passed the 60 million records milestone and new features related to data quality were added to the OBIS portal. The Communication and Outreach Task Team has done a major effort in improving the internal communication through organizing weekly check-in calls, exchange of information via Slack channels and a monthly newsletter. A consultant will be developing outreach material to help OBIS in better characterizing and visualizing the OBIS network and the activities and a new science officer will join the secretariat in September 2020. The year 2020 was supposed to be a crucial and busy year for OBIS and still a lot of the activities are either not yet started or are ongoing, such as the development of an online OBIS trainer certification course in collaboration with the OceanTeacher Global Academy, a platform for reviewing and selecting vocabulary terms, and further enhancements in quality control checks, including those related to taxonomic names. Through a renewed cooperation agreement we also envision a closer partnership with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which will benefit and strengthen our network. The annual OBIS steering group meeting will take place on 17-20 November 2020 as an online meeting.
Link to the report.