Updating FishNet 2 to sustain its use in high-impact, global, ichthyological research

FishNet, and its successor, FishNet 2 (http://www.fishnet2.neT), have served the needs of researchers for quality data on fish specimens in research collections for the past 20-years. FishNet 2 currently comprises data from 75 institutions globally and provides researchers access to 4.8 million records, representing more than 50 million fish specimens.

It is the most trusted source of information and specimens for scholarly research on fishes. However, the proprietary software on which the FishNet 2 was built has passed the end of its service life and needs to be updated. Updating FishNet 2’s operating system will require updates to the much of its software and other system components.

The proposed project will completely rebuild all components of FishNet 2 using the latest technology and an Open Source environment. All components of the FishNet 2 cyberinfrastructure will be updated. The number of institutional data providers to FishNet 2 will be greatly expanded.

The process of harvesting data from providers and processing the harvested data will be automated to keep the data up to date. We will also offer a variety of support services for FishNet 2 data providers. A dynamic, relational database design will be implemented with the flexibility to add data fields not currently reported to FishNet 2 users.

A number of new search and results-reporting features will also be implemented. Lastly, new services will be added, including data quality assessment tools, a FishNet 2-specific R package (statistical computing and graphics software), a web forum for communicating with users and data providers, a FishNet 2 hosted data publishing (IPT) service and a new and improved FishNet2 Application Programming Interface (API).

Notices on all project activities and all project products will be broadly disseminated to FishNet 2 data providers, software developers and members of the biodiversity informatics community through web forums, conference presentations, scholarly publications, and posts to the GitHub source code management service. We will provide training workshops on use of new FishNet 2 features to FishNet 2 data providers and users at ichthyological and informatics conferences.

The FishNet 2 user base will be expanded to include educators and the general public by integrating data from FishBase and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) into FishNet 2 results reporting, and by inviting educators to serve on a planned FishNet 2 Testing and Advisory Group. The Testing and Advisory Group will also involve FishNet 2 users and Tulane University Computer Science Capstone students, who will be engaged in platform design and code development for the project.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.