The founding charter of the Genomic Observatories Network

The co-authors of this paper hereby state their intention to work together to launch the Genomic Observatories Network (GOs Network) for which this document will serve as its Founding Charter. We define a Genomic Observatory as an ecosystem and/or site subject to long-term scientific research, including (but not limited to) the sustained study of genomic biodiversity from single-celled microbes to multicellular organisms.An international group of 64 scientists first published the call for a global network of Genomic Observatories in January 2012. The vision for such a network was expanded in a subsequent paper and developed over a series of meetings in Bremen (Germany), Shenzhen (China), Moorea (French Polynesia), Oxford (UK), Pacific Grove (California, USA), Washington DC (USA), and London (UK). While this community-building process continues, here we express our mutual intent to establish the GOs Network formally, and to describe our shared vision for its future. The views expressed here are ours alone as individual scientists, and do not necessarily represent those of the institutions with which we are affiliated.

Actions

The GOs Network will support actions aiming to build a coordinated and well-contextualized set of genomic biodiversity observations and archived vouchers (specimens and environmental samples). In particular, the GOs Network aims to provide a roadmap for ecosystem-based Genomic Biodiversity Assessment Reports as one of its contributions to GEO BON. These reports might start with a simple checklist of species, building up to a DNA barcode library and eventually to metagenomic inventories. The former will contribute towards the International Barcode of Life (IBOL) initiative and work towards the latter is already underway through the GOs Network’s first action, Ocean Sampling Day (OSD), an initiative of the EU FP7 Project Micro B3 to carry out coordinated sampling of marine microbial communities on June 21, 2014. The GOs Network will help expand the scope of OSD to include new geographies, sampling approaches, taxa and environments, and to maintain this action beyond 2014. OSD represents the GOs Network’s first attempt to aggregate participating sites into a global genomic observatory and to begin functioning as a distributed major research infrastructure. The GOs Network will build on OSD to support development of Marine Biodiversity Observation Networks, particularly through the coordinated actions of leading marine Genomic Observatories.

doi:10.1186/2047-217X-3-2