BiCIKL is a proposal that will initiate and build a new European starting community of key research infrastructures, establishing open science practices in the domain of biodiversity through provision of access to data, associated tools and services at (1) each separate stage of, and (2) along the entire research cycle. BiCIKL will provide new methods and workflows for an integrated access to harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of sub-article-level data (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables) extracted from literature. BiCIKL will provide for the first time access and tools for seamless linking and usage tracking of data along the line: specimens → sequences → species → analytics → publications → biodiversity knowledge graph → re-use.

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) initiative. DiSSCo aims to bring together natural science collections from 175 museums, botanical gardens, universities and research institutes across 23 countries in a distributed infrastructure that makes these collections physically and digitally open and accessible for all forms of research and innovation. DiSSCo RI entered the ESFRI roadmap in 2018 and successfully concluded its Preparatory Phase in early 2023. The RI is now transitioning towards the constitution of its legal entity (an ERIC) and the start of its scaled-up construction (implementation) programme. The primary goal of the DiSSCo Transition Project is to ensure the seamless transition of the DiSSCo RI from its Preparatory Phase to the Construction Phase (expected to start in 2025). In this transition period, the Project will address five objectives building on the outcomes of the Preparatory Phase project: 1) Advance the DiSSCo ERIC process and complete its policy framework, ensuring the smooth early-phase Implementation of DISSCo; 2) Engage & support DiSSCo National Nodes to strengthen national commitments; 3) Advance the development of core e-services to avoid the accumulation of technical debt before the start of the Implementation Phase; 4) Continue international collaboration on standards & best practices needed for the DiSSCo service provision; and 5) Continue supporting DiSSCo RI interim governance bodies and transition them to the DiSSCo ERIC formal governance. The Project’s impact will be measured against the increase in the RI's overall Implementation Readiness Level (IRL). More specifically, we will monitor its impact towards reaching the required level of maturity in four of the five dimensions of the IRL that can benefit from further developments. These include the organisational, financial, technological and data readiness levels.

The overarching objective of OneSTOP is to pioneer an innovative and joined-up approach to biosecurity for terrestrial invasive alien species, strengthening the interconnections between animal, plant, human and environmental health. OneSTOP aims to harness current technologies and citizen science, while overcoming challenges posed by dispersed and fragmentary processes, policies, and knowledge, to deliver methods for identification, early detection and surveillance of invasive alien species. OneSTOP aims to achieve transformative results to minimise the introduction, establishment and spread of invasive alien species by integrating cutting-edge detection methods, underpinned by prioritisation and robust models, alongside stakeholder engagement to inform harmonised policies and facilitate knowledge exchange. The outcomes will be relevant for invasive alien species policy, noting the importance of enhancing collaboration and coordination across local, national, and regional scales, recognising that geographic boundaries do not confine the impact of these species. By adopting a holistic and interconnected approach, OneSTOP seeks to establish a strategy to achieve rapid and transformative progress in detecting, eradicating and controlling invasive alien animals and plants, ultimately contributing to a more secure and resilient environment. Throughout, OneSTOP is based upon the strategic actions recommended for integrated governance of biological invasions in the recently published IPBES Thematic assessment report on invasive alien species and their control (IPBES 2023).

Accurate taxonomic knowledge and tools are needed to understand the drivers and impact of biodiversity decline. However, the field of taxonomy is severely hampered by a continuous decrease in capacity. With TETTRIs, we envision a transformative change in the field of taxonomy to build and sustain taxonomic research capacity through increasing knowledge and developing systems. TETTRIs will achieve this aim by creating joint knowledge in reference collections, training frameworks, and with innovative tools as well as by developing centralized resources providing access to an expertise marketplace, the taxonomic knowledge platform, and career paths. The core methodology for reaching these objectives includes co-creation with citizen scientists, and professionals in biodiversity hotspots. The open-access knowledge and systems built into TETTRIs, together with citizen scientists, will accelerate the integration and expansion of taxonomy in education, governance, and multidisciplinary research. This will ensure the long-term relevance of taxonomy as an instrumental science, necessary to halt European and global biodiversity loss, and ensuring ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea. TETTRIs builds taxonomic research capacity near biodiversity hotspots by networking natural history museums and other taxonomic facilities through bottom-up co-creation between 17 partners. The consortium includes the European Citizen Science Association and several of Europe's leading natural history museums, botanic gardens and universities unified under CETAF, the leading European voice for taxonomy and systematic biology. Impact throughout the EU and beyond is secured through involvement of associated initiatives such as DiSSCo and DEST, partners in third party projects, and key TETTRIs dissemination activities towards a new generation of taxonomists, citizen scientists, users in need of taxonomic knowledge, and decision makers

Many of the nearly 400,000 species of plants provide food, feed, medicines, and construction materials. Besides these positive impacts, plants also affect us negatively through pollen allergies, poisonous species, as invasive species, and as adulterants in herbal medicines. Nevertheless, plants are the most promising biological resource for our future. Current extinction risks of global flora and vast decline in taxonomic expertise demand accurate and rapid identification approaches to understand and valorise botanical biodiversity. Advances in genomic data and DNA sequencing are revolutionizing plant systematics, and modern molecular identification methods make it possible to accurately determine plants in ways that were technically impossible only a decade ago. Recently, it has become possible to detect substitution in herbal pharmaceuticals, monitor invasive alien species, trace fragments such as pollen and spores, uncover illegal trade in endangered species, make rapid and accurate molecular biodiversity assessments, and study historical plant diversity through DNA in museum specimens. However, to efficiently harvest the potential of the opportunities provided by the new genomic techniques, society today is in urgent need of trained biosystematists experienced in both taxonomy and in handling enormous amounts of genomic data. Plant.ID will innovatively address these challenges by bringing together academic and non-academic partners including regulatory agencies, industry, SMEs and NGO stakeholders, with the aim of developing molecular identification of plants through tailored approaches to species delimitation, metabarcoding, gene capture, and genomic barcoding, in order to empower stakeholders with simplified molecular identification of plants. By bridging classical taxonomic expertise with cutting-edge genomic approaches, Plant.ID will train a new generation of ESRs who will have immediate relevance to harnessing the central role of plants in the modern world.