Establishing an on-line registration system for algal names and their nomenclatural types is one of the main objectives of a DFG (Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft) project, which started in 2016.
This registration system will become part of the international network of biodiversity data and one of the operating global registration systems for names of organisms. Once established, PhycoBank will remove a major obstacle to research in the field of phycology. The envisaged workflows include manual registration of new algae names, as well as the automatic registration of new algal names published in scientific journals that already have a functioning electronic publishing workflow.
An important component of the registration system will be a comprehensive index of algae names. Its main purposes are to cover all algae names known to sources external to PhycoBank, and to support the registration workflow by providing these names in a harmonized and consistent way. The index could be furthermore a valuable source of names for other data systems. It may contribute to the Global Names Architecture (GNA) in the medium term. In the short term, it aims to provide names to the backbone of biodiversity networks such as GBIF and the Biological Collection Access Service (BioCASe).
The workshop will review and discuss interoperability aspects of the system with the global network of biodiversity information systems, including topics like persistent identifiers for names and typifications, data flows to name catalogs, and other services, as well as the harvesting and indexing of names and taxa for the algae name index. Another major focus of the workshop will be the integration of name registration systems in the workflow of digital publishers.
