Knowledge sharing and discovery across heterogeneous research infrastructures.

Research infrastructures play an increasingly essential role in scientific research. They provide rich data sources for scientists, such as services and software packages, via catalog and virtual research environments. However, such research infrastructures are typically domain-specific and often not connected.

Citclops: A next-generation sensor system for the monitoring of natural waters and a citizens' observatory for the assessment of ecosystems' status.

The European-Commission-funded project 'Citclops' (Citizens' observatory for coast and ocean optical monitoring) developed methods, tools and sensors, which can be used by citizens to monitor natural waters, with a strong focus on long-term data series related to environmental sciences. The new sensors, based on optical technologies, respond to a number of scientific, technical and societal objectives, ranging from more precise monitoring of key environmental descriptors of the aquatic environment (water colour, transparency and fluorescence) to an improved management of data collected with citizen participation. The sensors were tested, calibrated, integrated on several platforms, scientifically validated and demonstrated in the field.

Marine microbial biodiversity, bioinformatics and biotechnology (M2B3) data reporting and service standards.

Contextual data collected concurrently with molecular samples are critical to the use of metagenomics in the fields of marine biodiversity, bioinformatics and biotechnology. We present here Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (M2B3) standards for "Reporting" and "Serving" data. The M2B3 Reporting Standard (1) describes minimal mandatory and recommended contextual information for a marine microbial sample obtained in the epipelagic zone, (2) includes meaningful information for researchers in the oceanographic, biodiversity and molecular disciplines, and (3) can easily be adopted by any marine laboratory with minimum sampling resources.