Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
The SISRIS initiative is a workshop and symposium series that trains people how to use biodiversity informatics tools to discover, curate and analyze people data within natural history specimen databases. In the context of a natural history specimen record or label, people data refer to the individuals noted within the “collected by” and “identified by” fields. When used accurately, people data from natural history collection specimens can help uncover the history of science, accelerate research about biodiversity, and enhance the sustainability of the systematic research enterprise itself by allowing the collectors and identifiers to get credit for their work. Today, freely accessible natural history specimen databases, such as gbif.org, host nearly 3 billion specimen records, which offer an unparalleled opportunity for scientists and historians to leverage the power of people data, at scale.
The name of the initiative, SISRIS, reflects our goal of effecting community-level change by sharing skills and practices that can support inclusive and sustainable collections-based research infrastructure for systematics. Central to the initiative is sharing with participants how and why the use of unique identifiers for collectors and identifiers can advance biodiversity research at a community level as well as improve one’s own professional recognition as a collector or identifier. During the presentation, we will discuss the learning objectives for SISRIS workshop participants, the longitudinal assessment of outcomes from 2023 and 2024 events that trained 80 plant biodiversity scientists and herbarium collections’ professionals, and our lessons learned from leading these events. We also reflect on why we believe SISRIS is an example of an effective strategy for building community capacity in biodiversity informatics that could be adapted successfully by other groups of collections-based researchers, including historians of science. To this end, we have developed a Git-hub repository of project materials for free reuse. SISRIS is supported by awards from the US National Science Foundation (2247631 and 2247632).
Suggested reading:
Weeks A, Collins E, Majors TW, Murrell ZE, Paul DL, Sheik M, Shorthouse DP, Zeringue-Krosnick S (2024) Workshop Report: Supporting inclusive and sustainable collections-based research infrastructure for systematics (SISRIS). Research Ideas and Outcomes 10: e126532. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.10.e126532
Participants:
Andrea Weeks (Presenting)
George Mason University, Department of Biology and the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium, Fairfax, Virginia, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-0000-4541; aweeks3@gmu.edu
Elizabeth Collins
George Mason University, Department of Biology and the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium, Fairfax, Virginia, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-5352-0769
Twanelle W. Majors
Tennessee Technological University, Department of Chemistry, Cookeville, Tennessee, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-6043-0737
Zack E. Murrell
Appalachian State University, Department of Biology, Boone, North Carolina, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-6895-3161
Deborah Paul
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Prairie Research Institute, Illinois Natural History Survey, Species File Group, Champaign, Illinois, USA ORCID: 0000-0003-2639-7520
Matthew Sheik
Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, Colorado, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-9496-6898
David P. Shorthouse
Independent, Gatineau, Québec, Canada ORCID: 0000-0001-7618-5230
Shawn Zeringue-Krosnick
Tennessee Technological University, Department of Biology and the Hollister Herbarium, Cookeville, Tennessee, USA ORCID: 0000-0002-8027-5295