| Project Coordinator | Vincent Smith, London Natural History Museum, vince@vsmith.info |
| Funding Source | Horizon 2020, H2020-INFRAIA-2018-2020 – Grant Agreement No. 823827 |
| Duration | February 2019 – January 2023 |
SYNTHESYS+ is the final iteration of a programme which builds upon previous projects that ran continuously from February 2004 until August 2017. So far all iterations of the SYNTHESYS programme have developed collections infrastructure with international partners, via discrete work packages coordinated under deliverables of Access, Networking, and Joint Research Activities.
Above all, SYNTHESYS+ will lay the foundations for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCO), a massive scientific infrastructure project, which will see 115 European Museums from 21 Countries position their collections at the centre of data-driven scientific excellence and innovation in environmental research, climate change, food security, one health and the bioeconomy.
Specifically, SYNTHESYS+ aims to produce an accessible, integrated European resource for research users in the natural sciences. It will create a shared, high quality approach to the management, preservation, and access to leading European natural history collections.
A core element in SYNTHESYS is to provide funded researcher visits (access) to the 390,000,000 specimens housed by SYNTHESYS institutions. In particular, the 4,049,800 type specimens.
Alongside the access, a Joint Research Activity (JRA) aims to improve the quality of and increase access to digital collections and data within natural history institutions by developing virtual collections.
Network Activities (NA) will provide enhanced quality and quantity of online collections information to virtual users and will implement best practice benchmarks in collections care to raise standards and improve accessibility to collections for all physical users.
For more information visit the SYNTHESYS+ website.