DiSSCo

We brought DiSSCo’s community curation to FOSDEM 2026

Jose Alonso — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:35:25 +0000

24 February 2025

We have already talked about DiSSCover, the DiSSCo service that provides curation and annotation functions on the Digital Specimen both for community experts and AI systems. A few weeks ago, Soulaine Theocharides, from DiSSCo’s technical team, brought DiSSCover to the Open Source Developer’s European Meeting, FOSDEM2026.

You can watch the full presentation below.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post We brought DiSSCo’s community curation to FOSDEM 2026 appeared first on DiSSCo.

Notes on DiSSCo applications (IV): Virtual collections

Jose Alonso — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 13:38:17 +0000

13 January 2025

For several years now, DiSSCo has promised a true digital transformation for natural history collections (NHCs). Now, some of the core services and developments of the future Research Infrastructure have reached the level of maturity necessary to demonstrate the feasibility of such a transformation. The series of posts about DiSSCo applications aims to introduce some of the developments that are already making a difference for biodiversity research and collection management.

Virtual collections

Virtual collections allow users to (digitally) group specimens based on any chosen criteria—such as geographic region, taxonomy, or research focus—regardless of where the physical specimens are stored. These collections support various purposes: helping researchers locate prototype specimens with high-quality images, enabling personal research sets, supporting machine-learning training data, and facilitating cross-institution exhibitions or collaborations. Because DiSSCo aggregates specimens from many institutes worldwide, virtual collections promote cooperation, shared ownership, and FAIR data principles (FAIR = findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable).

Fig. 1 Working with virtual collections in DiSSCover.

DiSSCover allows users to filter specimens by taxonomy, country, image quality, and other criteria, and then save or share the resulting virtual collection with collaborators. The platform keeps track of relationships between specimens and the virtual collections they belong to, allowing users to trace identifications, metadata standards, and links between objects. This interconnected structure supports transparency and traceability across all specimen-related data.

In the video below, Sam Leeflang, DiSSCo’s lead developer, demonstrates how to build virtual collections with DiSSCover, DiSSCo’s unified system for curation and annotations.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Notes on DiSSCo applications (IV): Virtual collections appeared first on DiSSCo.

Notes on DiSSCo applications (III): Machine annotations

Jose Alonso — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:34:49 +0000

17 December 2025

Machine annotations

Issues such as scarce digitisation of natural collections, institutional silos, and manual coordination are hindering the efforts of the scientific community. To overcome this, DiSSCo emphasises AI-based automation to expand access, annotate data, and integrate collections across institutions.

DiSSCo is developing a distributed platform to harmonise data from over 800 institutions, enabling generic tools to operate across collections regardless of location. Core functionalities include assigning DOIs, tracking provenance, annotating data, and creating links between specimens and external resources like DNA databases or biodiversity aggregators (digital extended specimen). Tools like DiSSCover are built on top of this infrastructure, providing both human-oriented services for researchers and machine annotation services for automated data enhancement.

Screenshot of machine annotation in DiSSCover.

The video below presents several practical examples of machine annotation, including machine-driven georeferencing, entity linking, and image analysis. These services allow rapid digitisation of previously inaccessible or unstructured specimens, creating linked and FAIR-compliant records. The system also supports feedback and annotation evaluation, ensuring quality control and enabling institutions without extensive IT support to participate.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Notes on DiSSCo applications (III): Machine annotations appeared first on DiSSCo.

DiSSCo Transition (DTP)

Jose Alonso — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:25:38 +0000

Project Coordinator	Dimitris Koureas, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, dimitris.koureas@naturalis.nl
Funding Source	HORIZON-INFRA-2023-DEV-01, Grant Number: 101130121
Duration	December 2023 – May 2025

DiSSCo officially launched its transitional phase, DiSSCo Transition (DTP), in December 2023. DTP the primary vehicle through which DiSSCo will achieve the status of ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) and get full readiness to embark on the construction and eventual operation of DiSSCo ERIC.

DiSSCo Transition sets up to achieve four main goals during its 18-month lifecycle:

Advance the DiSSCo ERIC process and complete its policy framework.
Engage and support DiSSCo National Nodes.
Advance development of core e-services.
Continue international collaboration on standards and best practices.

The post DiSSCo Transition (DTP) appeared first on DiSSCo.

Notes on DiSSCo applications (II): ELViS

Jose Alonso — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 10:50:40 +0000

8 December 2025

ELViS

Currently, the way researchers and collection managers request and access specimens across institutions is fragmented, with each collection having its own entry point and protocols. This leads to systemic issues such as unequal visibility of collections, administrative overload, difficulties for multi-institution requests, and underutilisation of specimens.

Andres Rivera (center), researcher at Naturalis and a member of DiSSCo users group.

ELVIS was designed to solve these problems by providing a single, unified entry point linked directly to DiSSCo data, enabling standardised practices across institutions, better discoverability, and full traceability of request workflows. The system supports high request volumes, allows multi-collection and multi-needs requests, and adapts to each institution’s organisational structure. The platform also centralises communication through built-in chat tools to avoid scattered emails or phone calls.

Unfortunately, the ELViS demonstrator is currently experiencing technical difficulties, but below is an updated demo of the service, including how applications can create a project, select collections, upload documents, and add digitally identified or non-digitised specimens. The system handles loans, visits, sampling, imaging, and more. Managers can assign specimens, validate requests, add or modify specimen lists, and generate pre-filled administrative documents such as packing lists. ELVIS also tracks returns, publications, and unresolved items before a request can be closed. Additional features include advanced search, statistics, data export, and customizable user management.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Notes on DiSSCo applications (II): ELViS appeared first on DiSSCo.

Notes on DiSSCo applications (I): Users Group

Jose Alonso — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:58:16 +0000

26 November 2025

User Groups

The DiSSCo technical team at Naturalis is working with a reduced group of early adopters or “users group”. It brings together collection managers, researchers, and taxonomists to understand existing workflows and practical needs and priorities. The group is the result of a shift in how DiSSCo approaches its technical development—from a system-centered perspective to a user-centered one that places users, rather than technology, at the core of every new feature of our architecture.

Andres Rivera (center), researcher at Naturalis and a member of DiSSCo users group.

Through this collaboration, several high-priority needs have been identified. The most important one is improving how Naturalis data can be enriched by the wider expert community, particularly taxonomists. This requires simplifying the annotation flow, designing policies for validating community annotations, and enabling validated data to (reliably) return to collection management systems.

Looking ahead, the team has identified further opportunities for DiSSCo to support the group, including enabling virtual collections for specimen comparison, accelerating digitisation, and leveraging machine-learning tools for bulk annotation and specimen grouping. Some of these capabilities already exist technically, while others require new development and alignment with the collection’s strategy.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Notes on DiSSCo applications (I): Users Group appeared first on DiSSCo.

Watch DiSSCo’s technical demo session VI

Jose Alonso — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:58:15 +0000

19 October 2025

DiSSCo demos are back! It has been a while, and the team has gone through some changes, but that didn’t mean that development has halted. In fact, DiSSCo has hit an impressive milestone of over 5 million DOI’s minted. In additional to filling our production environment, we have some new and existing features to present.

By Sam Leeflang (DiSSCo lead developer)

DiSSCo Transition Project has officially ended, and one of the goals of DiSSCo was to deploy a first production version of the Digital Specimen Architecture (DSArch). With the release of a DiSSCo Minimal Viable Product (MVP), we are now able to start minting DOI’s for specimen and digital media. We are incredibly excited to share with you that we have recently hit the five million mark. For more information, please see our previous blog post.

Besides the DOI’s, we went over a number of other topics. Melanie de Leeuw gave us a presentation on the work she and Mathilde Lescanne are doing with the Naturalis user group. Their first focus is on improving the taxonomic annotation workflow. Together with Naturalis collection managers and taxonomic experts, they are testing and improving how experts can add new or modify existing taxonomic identifications through our DiSSCover interface. This is an excellent first step in onboarding our first experts, and we hope to inform you on the progress in our next session.

The next topic involved DiSSCo’s activity as early adaptor of the new Darwin Core Conceptual model and the associated Darwin Core Data Package (DwC-DP). DiSSCo has provided input for this new data standard and is at the forefront of implementation. Any data in DiSSCo will be available for download in the new DwC-DP. In addition, we also implemented an option to download any dataset in the current standard, the Darwin Core Archive (DwCA). Please be aware that the Darwin Core Conceptual Model will soon be in open review.

As the last topic, we wanted to show a new integration with a Machine Annotation Service (MAS). After community consultation we recognised VoucherVision, developed by William Weaver, as one of the leading tools for label transcription. As label transcription is an often manual time-consuming task vital to the digitisation of the specimen, we wanted to experiment if VoucherVision could help us. By integrating VoucherVision as a MAS in DiSSCo we are now able to run it on any specimen in our acceptance infrastructure.

We concluded the demonstrations with 15 minutes of questions. We would like to thank all participants and hope to see you at our next demo!

The following topics were presented in the demo:

DiSSCo at past 5 million DOI’s
User group starting on Taxonomic annotations through DiSSCover
DwCA and DwC-DP export products from DiSSCo
Voucher Vision integration in DiSSCo Sandbox

Looking forward to our next demo, which will be held in December, we hope to show the following topics:

Ongoing improvements to data ingestion
- Move to 20 million DOIs
Further improvements to annotation flow in DiSSCover
- Start testing with first experts
MAS scheduling on ingestion
(public) Virtual Collections (TETTRIs deliverable)
DWCA and DwC-DP available as export in DiSSCover
Refine annotation evaluation flow
Image (derivatives) storage in DiSSCo
Support integration with ELViS
Switch underlying Identity and Access Management Infrastructure

Slides from the presentation can be downloaded here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bFm7iM1NJ72bomsx6FJJ48q6IGt_ZXhGjG1Ca9GvQIA/edit?usp=sharing

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Watch DiSSCo’s technical demo session VI appeared first on DiSSCo.

DiSSCo’s Digital Specimen Data Enrollment

Jose Alonso — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 08:12:30 +0000

Join the Future of Scientific Collections

Your specimens hold answers to the planet’s most urgent challenges – it is time to make them more discoverable, connected, and impactful than ever before!

More information

The post DiSSCo’s Digital Specimen Data Enrollment appeared first on DiSSCo.

Five million digital specimens and images in DiSSCo: millions more to come

Jose Alonso — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:18:10 +0000

20 Aug. 2025

Authors: Sharif Islam, Wouter Addink, Soulaine Theocharides, and Sam Leeflang.

We are proud to announce a major milestone: over five million digital specimens and digital media objects are now available in DiSSCo. You can see them right now on our DiSSCover platform! These resources are now live and can be referenced through their DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers).

This achievement marks the culmination of years of effort from the DiSSCo Prepare and DiSSCo Transition projects, resulting in a Minimum Viable Product that begins to demonstrate the power of the digital specimen. Special thanks to the DiSSCo technical development team for their sustained efforts in developing, integrating, and maintaining the services that made this milestone possible.

Screenshot of DiSSCover portal. Aug 19, 2025

Why this matters

Citability: Using DiSSCo’s DOI, researchers can unambiguously reference specific specimens in publications. These DOIs are globally unique and assigned to every digital specimen and media item in DiSSCover. These identifiers resolve to the landing page on DiSSCover, and contain additional metadata for machine actionability. Note that there is now a specific field for this in Darwin Core data standard called digitalSpecimenID.

Provenance: DiSSCo captures all changes related to a specimen or media object. Using DiSSCo’s versioning capability, you can go back in time and see how data has changed.

Community Curation: DiSSCover’s primary feature is community annotation and curation. Users can annotate data in DiSSCover with the help of AI, allowing a community of experts to address data gaps and quality issues quickly in any specimen collection available on the platform. The more specimens that have a digital presence, the greater the experts’ reach.

How does it work

Each specimen and media object in DiSSCo is a FAIR Digital Object (FDO). This means it is more than just a specimen or media. It’s a machine-actionable object with a persistent Identifier, structured metadata, and a transparent provenance. These identifiers and their corresponding metadata (known as FDO Records) enable reliable referencing, citation, and integration into research workflows across disciplines. The objects form a digital surrogate of the physical specimen, encompassing not only collection event details, taxonomic information but also measurements, assessments, and connections to derived datasets.

This infrastructure is underpinned by:

A Technical Readiness Level 6 (TRL6) Minimum Viable Product of core infrastructure (see more details about the technical design and background in DiSSCo Prepare milestone output)
The openDS specification for standardising digital specimen data representation
FDO Profiles for consistent, type-aware metadata
A robust Persistent Identifier (PID) infrastructure providing DOIs through a collaboration with DataCite

These digital objects are also findable in the DataCite Commons. Screenshot captured, Aug 19, 2025

Together, these components bring DiSSCo closer to its vision of a pan-European, open, and interoperable Research Infrastructure for natural science collections, mobilising FAIR biological and geological specimen data.

What’s next?

In the next phase of development toward full operation we aim to grow to 20 million combined digital specimens and media. With 500 million specimens in the CETAF institutions in Europe alone, from which only a fraction is digitised, we know we have a long way to go but we are ready for the challenge.

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post Five million digital specimens and images in DiSSCo: millions more to come appeared first on DiSSCo.

The European Loans and Visits System (for natural history collections) unveiled!

Jose Alonso — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 19:01:33 +0000

1st Jul. 2025

Last June 26th, our colleagues from the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, in Paris, conducted an interactive online workshop on one of the flagship services of DiSSCo, the European Loans and Visits System, ELViS. The recording of the workshop is now available.

ELViS is a one-stop shop for access to the collections in Europe. It provides a unified way to request visits, loans and virtual access (VA). Virtual access requests through ELViS provide digitisation on demand as a new type of access, including support for collaborating on VA ideas and proposal submission.

The workshop, led by our colleague Maxime Grivau, software developer for DiSSCo, was an opportunity to present the progress of the MNHN on the tool. It consisted of three sections:

1. General presentation of ELViS, its objectives, and a progress update on the product;

2. Presentation of the request process followed by an interactive Q&A session;

3. Presentation of the request processing circuit (for collection managers) followed by an interactive Q&A session.

Click on the image below to watch the recording on DiSSCo’s Youtube channel.

Workshop report

Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:

DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure

DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration

DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model

The post The European Loans and Visits System (for natural history collections) unveiled! appeared first on DiSSCo.