The Coordination and Support Action pro-iBiosphere will come to an end by the 31^st of August 2014. The project was launched for two years to investigate ways to increase the accessibility of biodiversity data, improve the efficiency of its curation and increase the user base of biodiversity data consumers and applications. Ten of its key major outcomes have been summarised in the "pro-iBiosphere final brochure".

The project delivered a series of recommendations on various pressing topics to the wider biodiversity informatics community, for instance, on how to improve the use of digital infrastructures among taxonomists, on how to addresses barriers to the open exchange of biodiversity knowledge that arise from European laws, in particular European legislation on copyright and database protection rights. The recommendations have been documented in various pro-iBiosphere deliverables (here available).  

The project conducted 5 pilots and organised a total of seven meetings. The enthusiasm, involvement and breadth of the community participation to these meetings was very impressive!. The pro-iBiosphere final event took place from the 10^th - 12th of June 2014 at the Bouchout Castle (Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium). An audience consisting of more than 75 persons participated in the event. Activities organised during the event included a Workshop on the Biodiversity Catalogue, Demonstrations on the project pilots, Demonstrations on the outcomes of the Data Enrichment Hackathon, a Training on WikiMedia, a Poster session and the Final Conference.

A major highlight of the Final conference was the official launch and ceremony of the Bouchout Declaration for Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management.  At present (August 2014) more than 170 institutions and 90 organisations have signed the Declaration. For more information please see the news items "The Bouchout Declaration: A commitment to open science for better management of nature" (published below on page # and "The Bouchout Declaration: A contribution from the biodiversity community to Open Digital Science" (published on the Digital Agenda for Europe website).

The conference proceedings, including an event report (detailing the statistics and outputs of the Final Conference), a Storify (i.e. a collection of tweets and pictures) and pictures, are available here.

It has been a pleasure working with all of you!

Soraya Sierra

pro-iBiosphere Project Leader