Publishing with the Freshwater Information Platform
Four years after it was first launched, the Freshwater Information Platform continues to grow, providing invaluable resources for freshwater scientists, managers and policy makers. As we have documented on the blog, freshwaters are some of the most threatened ecosystems worldwide, with the latest WWF Living Planet Index showing an 83% reduction in global freshwater biodiversity since 1970. The Freshwater Information Platform is designed to provide the tools to help reverse these trends.
What is the Freshwater Information Platform?
The Freshwater Information Platform hosts data, maps, tools, visuals and texts produced by freshwater ecosystem research activities, largely undertaken in Europe. It makes a rich set of information about freshwater biodiversity and the threats it faces freely-available online. The platform offers a forum for information exchange and the open-access publishing of maps and data, and seeks to stimulate cutting-edge research and collaborations.
The adoption of EU directives seeking to protect biodiversity (such as the Habitats Directive) and water resources (such as the Water Framework Directive) mean that freshwaters are now among the most closely-studied ecosystems. However, the results from scientific research projects are often scattered and dispersed across numerous databases and websites, making them difficult to access and synthesise.
The Freshwater Information Platform provides an open-access and easily navigable repository for this rich information on freshwater biodiversity and ecosystems, offering a wide-ranging and constantly-growing knowledge base to support the management and conservation of our threatened freshwater ecosystems. The lead partners on the platform recently published an open-access journal article about its features and uses in Hydrobiologia.
One of the key aspects of the Freshwater Information Platform is the ability it gives to users to publish and share their freshwater data. This is done in three main ways: the Freshwater Metadatabase and Freshwater Metadata Journal; the Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal; and the Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas. Detailed information on how to publish data through these three channels can be downloaded here.
Freshwater Metadatabase and Freshwater Metadata Journal
There can be many variables in a freshwater dataset: which species and ecosystems it covers; who collected the data, how, where, and when; and how the dataset can be accessed. The Freshwater Metadatabase was established to organise such ‘metadata’ and to make information on datasets more visible to other scientists. The metadatabase allows users to explore more than 300 publicly available datasets to find exactly what they might need for their research. Dataset metadata can also be contributed to the Platform through an easy to use multi-lingual interface in English, German, French and Dutch.
Providing metadata – which often takes many hours of work and significant funding to produce and process – to an open-access platform for others to use might seem a thankless task. However, the Freshwater Metadata Journal allows contributors to publish the metadata of their datasets as a journal article, making their contribution citable and traceable with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), just like any other scientific paper. In other words, the open-access sharing of data benefits everyone. There are currently more than 40 open-access articles on a variety of freshwater related datasets published through the Freshwater Metadata Journal.
The Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal
Knowledge about freshwater species distributions, trends and threats is vital in designing effective conservation and restoration strategies. Since the start of the EU-funded BioFresh project in 2010, researchers across Europe have been collaborating to access and unite scattered biodiversity data, resulting in the Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal, now hosted on the Freshwater Information Platform website.
The portal provides freshwater species information and occurrence records. Since the end of the BioFresh project in 2014, distribution data are now published using the Freshwater Information Platform’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), which links them to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
The portal’s data is currently being harmonised with the rich datasets held by GBIF through the recently established ‘Freshwater Network’. In collaboration with the GBIF secretariat the Freshwater Network aims to create more visibility for published freshwater distribution data and also to help finding data for freshwater research. This Network is still under development and seeks the collaboration with other freshwater data publishing units.
Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas
Maps are valuable tools for exploring and visualising biodiversity datasets, often providing an engaging means of communicating information with policy makers and the public. The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas is an interactive, open-access gateway for users to visually explore the distribution of freshwater biodiversity, from local to global scales.
The Atlas currently holds over 50 interactive maps, organised across four thematic chapters: freshwater biodiversity; freshwater ecosystems; freshwater pressures and impacts; and freshwater conservation and management. Each map is captioned by a short text outlining its context, and linked to the original publications, which also makes them valuable for educational use. The Atlas is constantly growing as new maps and data are added to the database.
A long-term interdisciplinary partnership
Initiated by the BioFresh project in 2015, the Freshwater Information Platform will be maintained in the long-term by the commitment of four institutional partners: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management (BOKU), Vienna, Austria; University Duisburg-Essen, Department Aquatic Ecology (UDE), Essen, Germany; Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium; and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany. The Freshwater Information Platform is currently seeking new institutional supporters – please get in touch for more information.
The Freshwater Information Platform is affiliated to the Alliance for Freshwater Life – an interdisciplinary network of scientists, conservationists, educators, policy experts, creative professionals, and the public, working to improve the conservation and sustainable use of freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity. The Alliance will build upon the dissemination and data publishing unit of the Freshwater Information Platform.
The Freshwater Information Platform is an expanding network and welcomes supporters, contributors and friends to help implementing its vision and mission.
More information:
The Freshwater Blog 
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