Community content building for evolutionary biology: Lessons learned from LepTree and Encyclopedia of Life

Community content building for evolutionary biology

Lessons learned from LepTree and Encyclopedia of Life

Cynthia ParrSmithsonian InstitutionUniversity of Maryland

Today’s storyLepTree and Encyclopedia of Life built a couple of

websitesLepTree: slow for social content-building but highly

useful contentEOL: quick for content aggregation, but now need

to atomize and semanticize

Conclusion: Best of both worlds

LepTree http://leptree.net

Community featuresBlog

Forum Working Groups

Commenting

Complex LepTree taxon template

LepTree built semantic tools, then invited data entry

Export

http://www.eol.org• All species known to science• Freely accessible: open

access, open source• Available from a single portal

in a common format• Quality• Always growing as new

species are discovered and new knowledge is generated

Typical species page

Objects can come from many partnersObjects are sorted by topicEach partner gets credit

http://www.eol.org/content_partner

Catalogue of Life

IUCN

GBIF

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Content providersDatabasesLifeDesksPublic contribution

Curating

CommentingTagging

EOL aggregates, then annotates

http://www.eol.org/content_partner

LepTree’s data approach is more complex and customized LepTree• Highly structured

348 content “fields”

• Big S semantics (OWL, RDF triple store). Tied to people and project ontologies

• Custom data entry: required new workflow

EOL• Very coarsely structured

33 subjects (TDWG Species Profile Model)

• XML schema

• Variety of data paths: avoid changes in workflow

Comparing stats . . .

LepTree• 2 content partners

23 contributors/260 members

• 1750 pages (107 rich pages + ~450 fossils) + ~1600 images)

• 75 thousand triples 43 per taxon3300 per contributor

EOL• >45 content partners

430 curators/1000s contributors/~43,000 members

• 2.4 million pages390 thousand pages with objects

• 1.7 million data objects and 889K taxa with BHL links BUT0 are atomized

What LepTree has done with triples

Nothing.So far.

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100

200

300

400

500

600

CommentsRegistered usersWorking groups (counted manually)ProjectsShared protocols

Jan 2008Jan 2007 Jan 2010Jan 2009

Community areas of LepTree are flat

EOL’s content trajectory is promising

Species pages with a vetted object

Year

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 200

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Lessons learned

• Semanticizing tools wasn’t productivebut structuring was…

• Communities are hard!• Divide and conquer should scale

Future plansLepTreeBuildExpose Share

EOLPartnerAtomizeSemanticize

Delight• APIs• Phylogenies• Visualizations

Thank youhttp://leptree.netLeadership:, Mike Cummings, Don

Davis , Charlie Mitter, Jerry Regier, Susan Weller

Developers: John Park, Joshua Kim, Phuong Nguyen, Matt Chan, Matthew Conte, Danh Luong, Adam Bazinet, Erica Olson

Biologists: John Brown, Dana Campbell, Soowon Cho, Amanda Roe, Jennifer Zaspel, Jae-Cheon Sohn, Akito Kawahara, Andreas Zwick, Kim Mitter, April Dinwiddie

Funding: National Science Foundation AToL

http://www.eol.orgLeadership: Jim Edwards, David

Patterson, Nathan Wilson, Bob Corrigan, Mark Westneat, Marie Studer, Tom Garnett

Developers: Peter Mangiafico, Patrick Leary, Jeremy Rice, Dimitri Mozzherin, David Shorthouse, Lisa Whalley and others

Biologists: Katja Schulz, Jennifer Hammock, Tanya Dewey, Audrey Aronowsky. Leo Shapiro, R. Allen

Funding:John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Cornerstone Institutions, Private Donors

EOL Cornerstone InstitutionsThe Biodiversity Heritage

LibraryThe Field Museum of

Natural HistoryThe Missouri Botanical

GardenThe Marine Biological

Laboratory Harvard UniversityThe Smithsonian Institution

AmphibiaWebAnimal Diversity WebAntWebCatalogue of LifeFishBaseGlobal Biodiversity

Information Facility (GBIF)

International Union for the Conservation of Nature

Tree of Life Web Project

Sample Content Partners