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SYNTHESYS+

Fotos: HwaJa Götz, Carola Radke/ MfN

___  The SYNTHESYS programme ended 31 July 2023  ___

Synthesis of Systematic Resources

SYNTHESYS+ is a DiSSCo project and funded by the European Commission (Horizon 2020 programme). It creates an integrated European infrastructure for natural history collections and provides the base for DiSSCo. The Natural History Museum London (NHM) is project coordinator. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) is one of several partner institutions.

SYNTHESYS+ builds upon SYNTHESYS 1-3 and is the fourth and final iteration running from 02/2019 until 01/2023 and 07/2023 respectively. The former three iterations ran from 02/2004 until 07/2009, 09/2009 until 08/2013, and from 09/2013 until 08/2017.

The cooperating international partners implement several tasks, which constitute four core strands.

Core strands

NETWORK (closed since January 2023)

Network Activities (NA) – Network activities supported and developed the infrastructure of natural history collections across Europe. These activities provided foundations for DiSSCo by improving quality and quantity of online collection information for virtual usage and by determining best practice benchmarks for the collection management, standard increase and facilitation of access for all local users.

RESEARCH (closed since January 2023)

Joint Research Activity (JRA) – SYNTHESYS+ developed new collections services and technologies for researchers around the world. Projects included the development of digital collections infrastructure and applying artificial intelligence to speed up processes that make collections digitally available.

ACCESS (closed since end of July 2023)

Transnational Access (TA) – Supports scientific transfer by funding short visits to easily utilize collections, staff expertise, and analytical facilities at one of the 21 partner institutions (TAF members) for the purposes of the users‘ research.

In Germany, there are five TAF-Members = DE-TAF ("Taxonomic Access Facilities Germany"):

  • Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin (BGBM)
  • Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN)
  • Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart (SMNS)
  • Zoologisches Museum Alexander König Bonn (ZFMK) + Museum of Nature Hamburg = Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LiB)
  • Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN)

The MfN is the coordinator of DE-TAF.

The final EU-wide call for applications for short research visits (TA Call 4) was in summer 2022. 

VIRTUAL ACCESS (closed since end of July 2023)

Virtual Access (VA) – Users request virtual access to collections. Successful applications will lead to a funding for digitising collections according to community demand and data will be made openly available.

Further information