Extended call and webinar for GigaByte’s vectors of human disease series
Regular readers will have heard the news that TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, GBIF and GigaScience Press have announced a third call for authors to submit Data Release papers on vectors of human disease for inclusion in a thematic series published in GigaByte Journal. Thanks to additional support from the WHO we are today extending the deadline to 6th June, and organising a Cassyni webinar with GBIF to give additional author insight on how to publish vectors of human disease data in this manner.
Round three builds on the first two phases of the series, which mobilized more than 700,000 occurrence records and 890,000 specimens from more than 70 countries. Having 2o papers published from the first two calls, the webinar on 22nd April at 3pm UTC provides an opportunity to look back and give some author perspectives from Catalina Marceló-Díaz (Instituto Nacional de Salud, Columbia) and Paul Taconet (IRD, France). Sharing their insight into the process of publishing a data publication, how they worked with the supporting data helpdesk to share the data with GBIF, and the feedback they have received so far from publishing their data in this manner. After this we’ll get a talk from Paloma Shimabukuro from the GBIF vectors task group and data helpdesk team on their experiences and tips on submitting vectors data to GBIF. The webinar then ends with an opportunity to ask questions to the series editors, authors and vectors task group on data publishing, GBIF, and anything else you’ve wanted to know about vector biology.
To register for the free webinar here are the sign up details:
When: 22nd April, 3pm UTC (11am ET/4pm CEST)
Sign up: https://cassyni.com/events/iAC1qrycdt6HYcF9sdAUV?9x4e2
Also linked to the extended call deadline, GBIF is organizing additional training on data sharing on vectors to prevent and control vector-borne disease at the West African Aedes Surveillance Network (WAASuN) meeting in Accra Ghana, and there is still time for early career research to apply to attend (the application deadline is 14th April).
As a reminder the data papers submitted to the series should describe datasets with the following criteria:
- Data has clear relevance for research on vectors of human vector-borne diseases
- Dataset contains more than 5,000 records that are new to GBIF.org from 2023 onwards, along with high-quality data and metadata
- Data is dedicated to the public domain under an open CC0 designation
Due to generous support from TDR and the WHO article processing fee will be waived for 12 papers, provided that the publications are accepted and meet the above criteria.
The call for round three of manuscripts is now extended until 6 June 2025.
For questions on the series and if you would like to submit please contact the GigaByte Editors at editorial@gigabytejournal.com or the GBIF health helpdesk at health@gbif.org.
References
Shimabukuro P et al., Bridging Biodiversity and Health: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s initiative on open data on vectors of human diseases, GigaByte, 2024 https://doi.org/10.46471/gigabyte.117
Edmunds SC et al. Publishing data to support the fight against human vector-borne diseases. GigaScience. 2022 Nov 3;11:giac114. doi:10.1093/gigascience/giac114
Vectors of human disease series. GigaByte. 2022. https://doi.org/10.46471/GIGABYTE_SERIES_0002
