BiOnym - a flexible workflow approach to taxon name matching

Several taxon name matching services are available on line, and many more are no doubt living on computers of individual scientists. While these systems may work very well, most suffer from the fact that the list of names used as a reference, and the criteria to decide on a match, are hard-coded in the engine that performs the name matching. One of the objectives of the EU FP7 project 'iMarine' (http://www.i-marine.eu) is to create a taxonomic name matching system, BiOnym, that would separate these elements. The user will be offered a choice of several taxonomic reference lists, including the option to upload his/her own list to the iMarine infrastructure. Where possible, internationally recognized references are dynamically linked to the iMarine infrastructure; this avoids issues with intellectual property rights, and eliminates the inconvenience of keeping the reference lists up to date. The following lists are available in the infrastructure: the Catalogue of Life, World Register of Marine Species, Interim Register of Marine and Non-marine Genera, National Center for Biotechnology Information, and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System.