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Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema

On this wiki you can find various protoype development versions and a Draft Standard of the Taxonomic Concept Schema as developed at Napier University as a proposal for a TDWG standard. Linked pages include documentation, links to related documents and, most importantly, discussion by the taxonomic community.

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OutstandingIssues which have not been incorporated into the ReleaseVersion

ReleaseVersion

• The ReleaseVersion of the TCS schema (TCSv1.01) incorporating minor changes to TCSv1.0 discussed at St Petersburg and on TCS-LC.
• TaxonConceptSchemaDataProviders gives a list of data providers intending to generate TCS documents this coming year.
• TaxonConceptConsumers gives a list of organisations planning to consume TCS documents.

VotingDraft

• Introduction
• VotingDraft - a series of versions of the TCS Schema from that submitted to the TDWG Executive Committee 20th March 2005 and ongoing revisions to the Final version submitted on 1st July 2005 to be voted on at TDWG in 2005 and the Release Version incorporating minor changes discussed at St Petersburg and on TCS-LC following the meeting.
• Please see the tcs-lc MailingListArchive for related discussion on the TCS and LC.
• If you would like to contribute to the discussion, please use mailing list or for specific points on versions of the Voting Draft use the link VotingDraftDiscussion.
• Finally please see VotingDraftTracker for details on the current outstanding issues we have for the schema. Pertinent issue raised on the Wiki or emailing list will be added and progressed.

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DraftStandard and related discussion

• DraftStandard - the version of the Schema submitted to the TDWG Executive Committee 11th August 2004
• DraftStandardDocumentation - complementary documentation as word or pdf file.
• DraftStandardDiscussion
• RationaleForATaxonomicConceptTransferSchema - The Taxonomic Concept Schema is proposed as a draft standard to allow the exchange of taxonomic information between various data providers and users according to an abstract model that captures all possible representations of a Taxon Concept.

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Earlier Development work on the Schema

• PreStrawMan - anything schema-related dated before the eScience meeting in May 2004
• StrawMan - the version of the Schema presented at the eScience meeting in May 2004
• Index of all available versions of TheSchema (including internal only prototypes)

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Who We Are at Napier

Development of the Taxonomic Concept Schema has been carried out by members of the Napier University School of Computing in Edinburgh, lead by Professor Kennedy together with RobertKukla and with some later involvement of TrevorPaterson. This work originated from the requirements of the SEEK Taxon Group, for the development of a Taxon Name/Concept resolution service for accessing ecological data. The project has been funded jointly by SEEK and GBIF as part of TDWG. Invaluable contributions to the development of the schema have originated from many individuals within the SEEK Taxon Group, from discussions with a wide range of Taxonomic Data Providers (including GBIF, IOPI, IPNI, ITIS, Nomencurator, Species 2000, Taxonomer, Vegbank) and from the keen interest and participation of a variety of taxonomists worldwide; this is reflected and acknowledged where possible on the various discussion pages on this site.