Designing Collaborative Ecosystems and community organization: Introducing the multidisciplinary portal on “Biodiversity and Linguistic Diversity: A Collaborative Knowledge Discovery Environment” EvelineWandl-Vogteveline.wandl-vogt@oeaw.ac.atAustrianCenterforDigitalHumanitiesAustrianAcademyofSciences,AustriaDavorOstojicdavor.ostojic@oeaw.ac.atAustrianCenterforDigitalHumanitiesAustrianAcademyofSciences,AustriaBarbaraPiringerbarbara.piringer@oeaw.ac.atAustrianCenterforDigitalHumanitiesAustrianAcademyofSciences,AustriaHeimoRainerheimo.rainer@nhm-wien.ac.atNaturalHistoryMuseumVienna,AustriaKseniaZsaytsevaksenia.zsaytseva@oeaw.ac.atAustrianCenterforDigitalHumanitiesAustrianAcademyofSciences,Austria

The UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity

(UnitedNations,2002)states the importanceofCul-turalDiversityasoneofthe“commonheritageofhu-manity”andmakesitsdefence“anethicalimperativeindissociablefromrespectforthedignityoftheindi-vidual.”Indeclaringthehope,“thatonedaythedecla-rationwillacquirethesameforceastheUniversalDec-larationofHumanrights”,KoïchiroMatsuura,DirectorGeneral,manifeststhe importanceoftheDeclarationforglobalpeaceandoneof the foundingtextsof the

new ethics of the twenty-first century UNESCO(Wandl-Vogtetal,2016).

Thereisafundamentallinkagebetweenbiological,linguisticandculturaldiversity.“Overthepastdecade,thefieldofbioculturaldiversityhasarisenasanareaoftransdisciplinaryresearchconcernedwithinvesti-gating the links between the world´s linguistic, cul-tural,andbiologicaldiversityasmanifestationsofthediversityoflife”(Maffi,2005).

The interestgoesback to theobservation thatalldimensions are under threat by some of the sameforces.Itwasrealized,thatthismayleadtodramaticconsequencesforhumanityandtheearth.“Whileitiswidelyacknowledged,thatthedegradationofthenat-uralenvironment,inparticularhabitats,entailsalossofculturalandlinguisticdiversity,newstudiessuggestthatlanguageloss,initsturn,hasanegativeimpactonbiodiversity conversation. There is a fundamentallinkagebetweenlanguageandtraditionalknowledgerelatedtobiodiversity.Localandindigenouscommu-nitieshaveelaboratedcomplexclassificationsystemsforthenaturalworld,reflectingadeepunderstandingof their local environment. This environmentalknowledgeisembeddedinindigenousnames,oraltra-ditionsandtaxonomies,andcanbelostwhenacom-munity shifts to another language” (UNESCO, n.d.).Severalstudies,mainlycarriedoutonindigenouslan-guages, demonstrate mutual benefits. UNESCO (seeabove) considers the safeguarding of traditionalknowledgeandindigenousaswellaslocallanguagesusedtotransmitsuchknowledgeasayet“underusedbutpromisingtoolfortheconversationandsustaina-blemanagementofbiodiversity”.

Thispaperintroducesintoamultidisciplinary,col-laborative knowledge discovery environment (AASandACDH,2016),establishedattheAustrianAcademyofSciences(AAS),AustrianCentreforDigitalHumani-ties (ACDH) in close collaborationwithNatural His-toryMuseumVienna(NHM),launchedonSeptember,1st,2016.

Theprojectaimstoestablishacollaborativeopenscienceworkflowandenableknowledgediscoveryaswellasexperimentalscholarshiprelatedtobiodiver-sity,linguisticdiversityandit´sculturaldimensions.Itaimstoserveasasocialandtechnical infrastructureenabling research foramultidisciplinary communityofpractice.Theportalcontributes to thesustainabledocumentationandvisibilityofculturaldiversityandtraditionalknowledgeandtoopenitforthepublic.

Inthispaperweintroduceintofirstresultsofourendeavor,yetfocusonthedesignprocessandcommu-nitybuildingeffortsconcerningthe“Biodiversityand

Linguisticdiversityportal”(diversity4bio). diversity4biostartedasacase-study-collaborationbe-tweenNaturalHistoryMuseumVienna(NHM),HeimoRainer, and Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS),EvelineWandl-Vogt,in2012,intheframeworkoftheEuropeanfundedproject“OpenUp!OpeningupEuro-peanNaturalHistoryHeritageforEuropeana”. Basedonthebackgroundofthepartners(Taxonomy,Non-standard-language Lexicography) and theOpenUp!-projectsmainfocus(commonnamesforEu-ropeanametadata)thefirststeptogettowardsresultswastoworkonlinguisticdiversity.

Thepartnersdesignedtheprojectasacommunityorganization.Communityorganizationinthispaperisunderstoodasorganizingwithincommunitiesdefinedby shared experience, shared curiosity and interestsaswellasshared(virtual)workspace.Communityor-ganizationisaprocessbywhichacommunityidenti-fiesneedsandtakesaction,andindoingsodevelopsco-operativeattitudesandpractices(Ross,1955)

Themain characteristics of Community organiza-tion are discussed on the given example (Wallin,2016):

1. Theboundariesarefluid,informal:Eve-rybody who contributes to diversity4biobelongstothenetwork.Thereisnoneedofa certain scientific statusor collaborationcontract. Members support each other tofindtherightplacetofitin.Still,itisvisibil-ity, citation and reliability is relevant forthenetwork,whichmeansahighdegreeontransparencefordatainteractionandpub-lication.

2. Significant incorporation of voluntarylabor: Community organization does notendinlegalcontractsorfinancialremuner-ation.diversity4biorecentlyisaloosenet-work,where“members”areconnectedbycommonspiritandvisions for furtherde-velopmentsratherthanlegalcontracts.

3. Significantopensharingofknowledge:diversity4bio is aiming to bring togetherexperts to exchange and explore. The au-thors implement open scienceworkflowsbasedontheactorsneedsandthevisonsoftheopensciencedefinition.It is introduc-ingopensciencecommonsespeciallyinre-searchareaswherethesearestillatypical,e.g. in traditional lexicography units. Thedigital transformation is described as atime taking process of building trust,where first sampledata sets – e.g. names

for living organisms – are implementedinto new collaborative, open approaches,enriched and methodologically innova-tivelyexploited.

4. Collaborativecommunitiesdisplay:Be-hind the virtual portal scenery, there is ashared ethic of independent contributionandthereisaformalizedsetofnormsofin-terdependentprocessmanagementaswellasaninteractivesocialcharacterandiden-tity.Communitybuildingwasaprocessofseveral years, which is reflected in thepresentation, e.g. face to facemeetings ofthe protagonists, just after first results ofcollaboration (biological data + linguisticdata > Europeana-metadata workflow)workshop to connect others and openingupofthegrouptowardsaportalandfirstpublicationofresults.

Theveryinteractiveandflexiblecommunityorgan-izationmodeliscertainlyachallenge,especiallyasdi-versity4bioismixingupseveraldisciplineswithoutaverycertainorconcreteresearchfocus. Basedonthisfactwedohaveestablishednetworkfa-cilitators for botanics/taxonomy, Heimo Rainer, andculturaldata/lexicography,EvelineWandl-Vogt.

Technically seen, diversity4bio is a first exampleforanopenscienceworkflowdesign.Thearchitecturemakes use of existing (freely available) technologiesandconnectswithexistinginfrastructures.Thearchitectureconsistsofthreelayers:

1. TheHumanInterfaceLayer2. ThePersistentLayer 3. TheEnrichmentLayer

Figure 1: Pilot-architecture of the open workflow for the

diversity4bio © Davor Ostojic

DataVisualization is part of theHuman InterfaceLayer and developed within the project exploreAT!(exploring austria´s culture through the language

glass). Furthermore, within the COST action IS1305ENeL(EuropeanNetworkofelectronicLexicography)the interlinking and the use of the framework wasstimulated.Thismaybeseenasexampleonhowon-going initiatives contribute to the collaborative ap-proachandviceversa.

Figure 2,3 : Visualisation pilots developed in the project exploreAT!: Generalised and ready to be scaled up for

global resources © Roberto Theron et al.

Theportaloffersareconcileservice.Itqueriesthe

so called CommonNames Service (CNS) atNHM forcommon names of living organisms in different lan-guagesforagivenscientificname(Latin,Greek).TheportalofferstheopportunityofaCSV-importwiththeowndata collection.Data import is time consuming.CNSitselfisadistributedservice. Finally, theportaloffers–asa firststep– foraCSV-importofscientificnamesscript-basedRDF-modeling. Furtherenrichmentservicesareindevelopment,butatthetimebeingnotimplementedintotheportal,e.g.script-basedsemi-automaticallyinterconnectionwiththeEuropeana–workflowmentionedabove.Further-more,outoftheboxrepositoriesforresearchersandcitizenswith less technicalknowledgearenecessaryto keep in trackwith our vision to document tradi-tionalknowledgeandrelatedlocallanguageindevel-opment.

Finally,designprobesforthecollaborativeprocesshavebeendeveloped.Theinterlinkedscientificallyin-terpreteddatamaybereusedtobuildaPan-European

(COSTENeLvision)orevenglobaldictionaryofplantnamesandenvisionbasedonthisnewmovementsforcollaborationaswellasresearch.

Figure 4: Design Probes for the further development of the

diversity4bio portal towards a broader audience with cultural interest © Alisa Goikhman.

Inconclusion,theauthorsgiveanoutlookonnext

steps,pathwaystocontributeandjoininandsharethepersonalexperiencesalongtheway.

Acknowledgements diversity4bio is connected to and partially finan-

cially supported by ongoing initiatives and projects,e.g.COSTactionIS1305EuropeanNetworkforelec-tronic Lexicography (ENeL), exploreAT! (exploringaustria´sculturethroughthelanguageglass),DARIAH-EU,Europeana,EGIENGAGE,SCIGAIA.

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