What is the possible impact of the Bouchout Declaration?

During the final event of the pro-iBiosphere project a panel of representatives of the biodiversity community discussed the potential impact of the Declaration. The panelist included Wouter Los (University of Amsterdam); Robert Guralnick (University of Boulder and VertNet); Chuck Miller (Missouri Botanical Garden); Roger Hyam (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) and Karol Marhold (Institute of Botany Bratislava). The following topics have been addressed, including input from the audience.

What is the Bouchout Declaration?

• An enabling mechanism for international cooperation and collaborations
• A signal from the community that we want to provide access and contribute to the growing knowledge sphere.
• A basis as an educator regarding new possibilities for open access and finding data and to foster respective dabates

What will be the impact of the Declaration

• Changes in social norms
• Role model for getting a community together, implement Open Access
• The BD as initiator of internal discussions on Open Access, data sharing
• Open access as an evolutionary process: knowledge becomes an asset
• Easy shopping
• Usage metrics of biodiversity data

The next steps

• From principles to action (e.g. implementation of identifiers; commitments of the institutions
• Optimize the impact through outreach and involvement of the community
• Coordinate with other related initiatives
• Loose agile governance
• Develop metrics on implementation of the principles
• Prepare FAQ and if necessary specific documents dealing with
• General Open Access: Business plans for future publishing and data sharing
• Copyright needs to be properly explained
• Costs versus attribution
• New publishing models that suit our community
• Implementation manuals (s) of identifiers