EDIT

EDIT
European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy

The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) is the collective answer of 27 leading European, North American and Russian institutions to a call of the European Commission , issued in 2004, for a network in "Taxonomy for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research". The EDIT project has started on the 1rst of March 2006 and will last 5 years.

Among the members of EDIT are the premier natural history collections-based institutions worldwide, which have both the management capacity and the will to progress toward EDIT's objectives. Their collections are global in coverage and are supported by complementary expertise. More than half of the world's natural history specimens, which constitute the large scale infrastructure for taxonomic research, are held in the repositories of EDIT's membership. The inclusion in the consortium of network institutions devoted to management of biodiversity data, and of a research organisation directly related to users of taxonomy for agriculture and environment, in addition to the links or inclusion of many partners with universities will facilitate dissemination of EDIT taxonomic research and training toward a wide audience.

EDIT will bring together the leading taxonomic institutions in Europe that for historical reasons have developed independently. The association with leading North American and Russian partners will make it a worldwide leading network. The consortium so constituted unites the premier natural history collections-based institutions, to progress toward EDIT's structural and scientific objectives.

Scientific objectives

The overall objective of EDIT is to integrate European taxonomic effort within the ERA and to build a world leading capacity. EDIT will create a European virtual centre of excellence, which will increase both the scientific basis and capacity for biodiversity conservation. This will provide better access to a more unified and better quality taxonomic research information base.

The operational and structural objectives of EDIT are:

To reduce fragmentation and to transform taxonomy into an integrated science.
To strengthen the scientific, technological and information capacities needed for Europe to understand how biodiversity is modified through Global change.
To progress toward a transnational entity by encouraging durable integration of the most important European taxonomic institutions, forming the nucleus of excellence around and from which institutions and taxonomists can integrate their activities.
To promote the undertaking of collaborative research developing, improving and utilising the bio-informatics technologies needed.
To create a forum for stakeholders and end-users for taxonomy in biodiversity and ecosystem research.
To promote the spreading of excellence to fulfil the needs of biodiversity and ecosystem research for taxonomy based information.

For more information about the EDIT project, click here.

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