Secretariat and infrastructure

The operational costs of the Catalogue of Life Secretariat and infrastructure are at present carried by an international consortium consisting of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS), Naturalis Biodiversity Center, and the Smithsonian Institution. In the near future, Catalogue of Life will roll out a new financial mechanism for covering its operational costs. The new model is aimed at reaching more financial stability and making sure COL is carried and steered by the main international biodiversity data initiatives that make use of COL’s services for their core activities.

Project funding

Species 2000 / Catalogue of Life is involved in several projects, sometimes through the host of the Secretariat, Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

• DiSSCo Prepare: A European Commission funded project for the preparatory phase of the ESFRI initiative Distributed System for Scientific Collections. Species 2000 / Catalogue of Life is mostly involved in a technical work package to explore the required taxonomic services for the DiSSCo infrastructure.
• Synthesys+: A European Commission funded project creating an integrated European infrastructure for natural history collections. Through Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Catalogue of Life is mostly involved in supplying services to a specimen data refinery.
• Catalogue of Life Plus: A project funded by Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility, Species 2000 / Catalogue of Life, Illinois Natural History Survey, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, and the Smithsonian Institute to complement the global work programme of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility on building a joined infrastructure for names and taxonomy.

Past investments

For years, the University of Reading financed a large part of the operational costs of Species 2000. Species 2000 / Catalogue of Life has also been involved in several projects financed by the European Commission. It is estimated that in its 25 years of existence, Species 2000 has received about 19 million euro investment originating from the following EU projects:

• Open-Up! 2014-2015 - Opening up the Natural History Heritage for Europeana [Reference Number: 270890]
• EUBrazilOpenBio 2011-2013 - EU-Brazil Open Data and Cloud Computing e-Infrastructure for Biodiversity [Reference Number: 288754]
• i4Life 2010-2013 - Indexing for Life [Reference Number: 261555]
• BHL-Europe 2009-2012 - Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe [Reference Number: ECP-2008-DILI-518001]
• 4D4Life - Distributed Dynamic Diversity Databases for Life [Reference Number: 238988]
• EDIT 2006-2011 - Toward the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy [Reference Number: 018340]
• ENBI 2003-2005 - European Network for Biodiversity Information [Reference Number: EVK2-CT-2002-20020]
• EuroCat 2003-2006 - The Catalogue of Life: Biodiversity Resource and e-Science Gateway [Reference Number: EVR1-CT-2002-20011]