BioMoQA - Biodiversity Monitoring via Question Answering

The BioMoQA project, funded by the call B3.2 of the programme Open Science I, Phase B – ORD (swissUniversities) was officially started on July 1st.

For over a decade, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and HES-SO/HEG Geneva have maintained the SIB Literature Services (#SIBiLS, https://sibils.org/). In 2023, SIBiLS received a significant upgrade with the launch of the Biodiversity PMC digital library. SIBiLS operated the backend of the Biodiversity PMC front-end. It is emerging as a global resource in the field as it complements and addresses limitations of biological scholarly databases such as NLM’s PMC or EuropePMC as it is likely the largest digitally-native repository of articles for biodiversity research and related disciplines; thus delivering a broad coverage “One Health” library.

BioMoQA aims to enhance Biodiversity PMC to address key biodiversity questions about the effects of climate change, habitat loss or invasive species on biodiversity and ecosystems, and the implications for human societies. The new services will support experts and researchers in biodiversity, ecology and environmental sciences who need better search & access services to all bio-related publications.

We will enhance the platform's AI-powered analytical services (i.e Question-Answering, SPARQL endpoint) and the acquisition & FAIR-ification of new and original contents as operated by PLAZI and in particular the TreatmentBank database, which contains Open Access taxonomic treatments from Open Access (OA) and non OA articles. We will evaluate how these services can help ecologists from the University of Neuchâtel to monitor biodiversity on island ecosystems. These new services will serve to supply scientific communities interested in biodiversity with a holistic Single Access Point to enhance evidence-based conservation of biodiversity and support the restoration of ecosystems.