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Nodes, Working Groups and Core Facilities

iBOL invites countries to participate as Nodes of the project. New Nodes officially join iBOL by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Institutions and individuals who affiliate to iBOL Nodes can then participate in its programs by contributing to the activities of its Working Groups and Core Facilities.

NODES

The MOU defines iBOL Nodes as "networks of leading researchers and key organizations affiliated to iBOL and engaged in DNA barcoding and/or in funding and advancing biodiversity science in a country or region of the world."

iBOL is the sum of its Nodes. They are the fundamental units that provide resources and services (e.g. build capacity and set priorities for barcoding in their country/region).

Institutions or individuals interested in being involved with iBOL start by identifying themselves with (or as) a Node, effectively committing their interest, knowledge, expertise, money, materials, services or other resources which then count as part of the Node's contribution to iBOL's overarching goals.

What Nodes do

  • - Work to implement international priorities with Working Groups, but also build on local national strengths, and identify national priorities.
  • - Lobby national/regional funders and major institutions to support DNA barcoding.
  • - Obtain funds to build national barcoding capacity.
  • - Provide effective communication and a national support network for the local barcoding community.

WORKING GROUPS

Institutions and individuals who want to take an active part in their Node's effort within iBOL agree to channel their interest, knowledge, skills, expertise, money, materials or other resources into one or more (or even many) of iBOL's ~20 Working Groups, organized under ~five Themes.

A subset of the institutions and individuals active in Working Groups will be engaged as contributors of samples and/or data to the barcode library, via the 11 Working Groups in Theme 1 (WGs 1.1 to 1.11).

What Working groups do

  • - Set global priorities, and strive to ensure that big projects (campaigns) within their working groups are ultimately realised.
  • - Identify the major limiting factors in the supply chain, and liaise with nodes and sequencing factories to overcome them.
  • - Work with the Scientific Steering Committee Executive and sequencing factories to identify major providers of samples who can source large numbers of high-quality samples.
  • - Advise sequencing factories as to which projects are likely to have low likelihood of success and hence avoid resource wastage.
  • - Liaise with sequencing factories on protocol development, informatics requirements and most effective use of existing resources (e.g. checklists) for a given taxonomic group.
  • - Form a steering group, enabling input into strategy development from the key players.

CORE FACILITIES

The iBOL MOU states: “iBOL Core Facilities are laboratories and technology platforms established by, or affiliated to, iBOL Regional and Central Nodes. These core facilities provide the DNA barcoding community with the sequencing, analysis, bio-informatics, bio-repository, training and/or knowledge mobilization resources appropriate to a project of iBOL's scale."

What Core Facilities do

  • - Undertake the bulk of DNA sequencing for iBOL, and establish robust protocols and informatics resources.
  • - Respond to priorities of working groups when processing samples.
  • - Make clear statement of sample processing capacity, expected processing times, which samples will be treated as priorities, and what the expectations are for sample/data quality and data release.

Get Involved in iBOL


RESOURCES:
- iBOL Nodes Memorandum of Understanding (PDF)
- MOU Appendix I - Participation Guidelines (PDF)
- MOU Appendix II - Node Profile Template (MS Word)
- MOU Appendix III - Data and Resource Sharing Policies (PDF)

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