BACKGROUND: Data are the evidentiary basis for scientific hypotheses, analyses and publication, for policy formation and for decision-making. They are essential to the evaluation and testing of results by peer scientists both present and future. There is broad consensus in the scientific and conservation communities that data should be freely, openly available in a sustained, persistent and secure way, and thus standards for 'free' and 'open' access to data have become well developed in recent years. The question of effective access to data remains highly problematic. DISCUSSION: Specifically with respect to scientific publishing, the ability to critically evaluate a published scientific hypothesis or scientific report is contingent on the examination, analysis, evaluation - and if feasible - on the re-generation of data on which conclusions are based. It is not coincidental that in the recent 'climategate' controversies, the quality and integrity of data and their analytical treatment were central to the debate. There is recent evidence that even when scientific data are requested for evaluation they may not be available. The history of dissemination of scientific results has been marked by paradigm shifts driven by the emergence of new technologies. In recent decades, the advance of computer-based technology linked to global communications networks has created the potential for broader and more consistent dissemination of scientific information and data. Yet, in this digital era, scientists and conservationists, organizations and institutions have often been slow to make data available. Community studies suggest that the withholding of data can be attributed to a lack of awareness, to a lack of technical capacity, to concerns that data should be withheld for reasons of perceived personal or organizational self interest, or to lack of adequate mechanisms for attribution. CONCLUSIONS: There is a clear need for institutionalization of a 'data publishing framework' that can address sociocultural, technical-infrastructural, policy, political and legal constraints, as well as addressing issues of sustainability and financial support. To address these aspects of a data publishing framework - a systematic, standard approach to the formal definition and public disclosure of data - in the context of biodiversity data, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, the single inter-governmental body most clearly mandated to undertake such an effort) convened a Data Publishing Framework Task Group. We conceive this data publishing framework as an environment conducive to ensure free and open access to world's biodiversity data. Here, we present the recommendations of that Task Group, which are intended to encourage free and open access to the worlds' biodiversity data.

In modern science, substantial amounts of data are often synthesized into concise publications that present only certain facets of the information contained in the full dataset. Complete datasets are rarely available for independent study. A report published in 2008 [1] neatly summarized the inadequacy of this conventional approach and suggests the great potential for a new paradigm of data sharing: The digital age has presented the research community with new opportunities. Research findings in digital form can be easily moved around, duplicated, handed to others, worked on with new tools, merged with other data, divided up in new ways, stored in vast volumes and manipulated by supercomputers if their nature so demands. There is now widespread recognition that data are a valuable long-term resource and that sharing them and making them publicly available is essential if their potential value is to be realised. There are two essential reasons for making research data publicly available: first, to make them part of the scholarly record that can be validated and tested; second, so that they can be re-used by others in new research. We are now witnessing the emergence of new journals dedicated to the publication of data, specifically including publication of metadata that support well-informed retrieval of data from stable, persistent and secure sites. Data sharing became a reality with the advent of computers capable of gathering large volumes of data concurrently with mechanisms to store and access those data. Taken together, these two factors gave us the technologies to move the data about, i.e. the world wide web [2]. The first significant instances of such data sharing occurred in the particle physics and astrophysics communities, joined soon by the molecular biology community. These early adopters, from 'big science' domains, used comparatively simple, standardized data structures with very large collections of data. The benefit of having large communities of scientists working on these massive datasets made clear the gains to be had from data sharing. The science of biodiversity, by contrast, tends to collect data in much smaller quantities, handled in heterogeneous and non-standardized data structures. A US National Academy of Sciences [3] report noted that these datasets were disaggregated components of an incipient network. More importantly, taxonomists and ecologists can still pursue their disciplines essentially as individuals or in small teams. The social structure of big machines and large collaborative teams has not yet made itself felt, although that is beginning to change [4]. In recent years a new discipline, 'biodiversity informatics', has gained prominence, focusing on discovery, integration, management and dissemination of data generated through biodiversity studies. Technical and infrastructural innovations have been achieved, but challenges remain. Biodiversity informatics must yet establish itself as scientifically, ecologically, socially and economically relevant and its long-term viability will depend on establishing that relevance. A major challenge has been the lack of a comprehensive 'data publishing framework' that can overcome technical, infrastructural, social, political, cultural and economic barriers. To address this, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) constituted a 'Data Publishing Framework Task Group' in the spring of 2009. This special supplement presents the recommendations that emerged from the task group deliberations, together with papers that address additional challenges of data sharing in the biodiversity sciences. Specifically, we seek to examine the existing technical structures that can be used but, perhaps more importantly, we examine mechanisms to motivate data publication, through citation metrics and other measures of utility. This supplement starts with an article by Moritz et al. [5] that summarizes the recommendations of the GBIF Data Publishing Framework Task Group. The remaining four articles focus on specific aspects that can help improve various components of the envisaged framework. Chavan and Penev [6] describe the 'data paper' as one of the incentivizing mechanisms for data publishing. Ingwersen and Chavan [7] postulate a 'Data Usage Index' as a metric to measure the impact of data publishing from usage patterns. Arino et al. [8] conceptualize a 'Biodiversity Informatics Potential Index' to assess the potential of nations in furthering biodiversity informatics and to prioritize efforts to extend the data held. Finally, Goddard et al. [9] articulate the needs and obstacles of biodiversity data hosting infrastructure. It is clear that not all problems relating to data publishing have yet been resolved, and which of these proposed mechanisms will be taken up by the community involved in providing the data remains to be seen. The issue of persistent identifiers remains, and an acceptable community standard for data citation has yet to be established. It is our hope that the approaches described here will stimulate a broad movement to publish biodiversity data, as is being demanded by funders in many countries. It will undoubtedly take time to establish a single default portal for biodiversity data that has a reputation similar to that GenBank has among molecular biologists.

Abstract For efficient collaboration between participants, eye gaze is seen as being critical for interaction. Video conferencing either does not attempt to support eye gaze (e.g. AcessGrid) or only approximates it in round table conditions (e.g. life size telepresence). Immersive collaborative virtual environments represent remote participants through avatars that follow their tracked movements. By additionally tracking people's eyes and representing their movement on their avatars, the line of gaze can be faithfully reproduced, as opposed to approximated. This paper presents the results of initial work that tested if the focus of gaze could be more accurately gauged if tracked eye movement was added to that of the head of an avatar observed in an immersive VE. An experiment was conducted to assess the difference between user's abilities to judge what objects an avatar is looking at with only head movements being displayed, while the eyes remained static, and with eye gaze and head movement information being displayed. The results from the experiment show that eye gaze is of vital importance to the subjects correctly identifying what a person is looking at in an immersive virtual environment. This is followed by a description of the work that is now being undertaken following the positive results from the experiment. We discuss the integration of an eye tracker more suitable for immersive mobile use and the software and techniques that were developed to integrate the user's real‐world eye movements into calibrated eye gaze in an immersive virtual world. This is to be used in the creation of an immersive collaborative virtual environment supporting eye gaze and its ongoing experiments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Collaboration and competition are important factors of Networked Virtual Environments (NVE). Both require a certain level of consistency in order for the interaction to be fruitful and compelling. However, finite network bandwidth and communication delay are key factors affecting this aspect of interactivity. A popular method in their mitigation for dynamic entities is the IEEE DIS standard dead reckoning mechanism [1].

A customer's experience with an e-commerce environment extends beyond the interaction with the website, including delivery of products, post-sales support, consumption of products and services, and so on. It is the total customer experience that influences the customers' perceptions of value and service quality, and which consequently affects customer loyalty. In our cross-disciplinary research in human-computer interaction (HCI) and relationship marketing, we have been investigating how HCI and customer relationship management (CRM) strategies can be integrated in the design of e-commerce so as to engender customer retention, trust and loyalty. We have performed a series of empirical studies to understand customers' requirements and perceptions about service-quality from e-shopping and e-travel environments. From these studies, we have developed an empirically-grounded evaluation instrument, E-SEQUAL, which we discuss in this paper. The development team can apply it at different phases of an e-commerce development life-cycle to integrate customers' perceived dimensions of service quality into the design and evaluation of e-commerce.

Interactive 3D visualization is increasingly used for design/review activities in urban planning and construction. However, as this becomes more wide spread user expectations of the levels of interaction and the functionality expand. Many organizations maintain rich sources of information describing the urban environment and society, supported by a distributed set of services that provide functionality. These resources present an opportunity to create new design/review environments in which groups of stakeholders may collaborate to explore and evaluate new solutions. However, using this distributed functionality and information presents new challenges in defining and managing the content of interactive de sign/review visual environments. This paper presents a novel system for multi-user co-located interaction by which a group of users, viewing a common 3D visualization, are provided with collaborative interaction through a set of distributed personal interfaces. A fundamental part of this activity is the formation of a unified, distributable model that references distributed content, and the available functionality related services provide

This article provides an introduction to the usage of software engineering approaches and tools for the design of user experience (UE). This approach was developed for three main reasons: (a) to provide UE design teams a rigorous, methodical, encompassing method that can be applied throughout the entire product development cycle; (b) to provide designers a way to work with abstract concepts to establish the conceptual design of the system before progressing to the realization of the design to the appropriate platform; and (c) to communicate the intended design to the implementation team in a manner that is concise, complete, and familiar. The approach is the application of Unified Modeling Language concepts to describe users and the UE design rather than the technical architecture. It is believed that designing the UE design separately from the technical architecture will help ensure teams deliver a usable and delightful UE. The methods in this article have been applied to a handful of real-world projects in the last year and a half. Thus far, the application of software engineering approaches and tools have been found to be very powerful aids that have enabled the creation of highly useful Web experiences as well as software applications. Our intent is to address the full gamut of issues involved in creating a total user experience (UE)-from discovery of users needs through high-level and low-level design, ensuring fidelity during development, and deployment, with a full assessment of how well the design meets users' needs. We believe that through a concerted use of such a rigorous approach we can greatly improve not only the UE of products we create, but also the experience of designing and developing them. We are not the only team taking this direction in UE design. It has become clear to many in our field that a more rigorous, thorough, and accurate approach to UE design is not only possible-it is necessary, for many of the same reasons that software engineers long ago embraced such practices. As we are evolving our approaches in other phases, this article focuses on the discovery and design phase activities.