Swedish society Oikos: Oikoslistan: Second call for data papers describing datasets on vectors of human diseases

Second call for data papers describing datasets on vectors of human diseases

TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases hosted at the World Health Organization, GigaScience Press and GBIF have announced a second call for authors to submit Data Release papers on vectors of human disease for inclusion in a thematic series published in GigaByte Journal.

This call builds on the first part of the series, which mobilized more than 500,000 occurrence records and 675,000 sampling events from more than 50 countries.

Vector-borne diseases account for about one quarter of all infectious diseases. Although there has been significant progress for malaria, with a recent decrease in malaria morbidity and mortality rates, this progress is currently halting. Other diseases, such as those caused by arboviruses like dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and more recently Zika, are expanding, with an increased number of cases and fatalities.

The necessity for developing new vector control strategies, approaches and tools was recognized through the Global Vector Control Response approved by the World Health Assembly in 2017. Among the mutually agreed objectives between GBIF and TDR is to work on a repository of data related to vectors and support design and identification of sources and contacts for data mobilization campaigns to improve data coverage to help research on human health. Within the framework of this collaboration, GigaByte will support a second issue on data papers on vectors.

The data papers submitted should describe datasets with the following criteria:

Data has clear relevance for research on vectors of human vector-borne diseases
Dataset contains more than 5,000 records that are new to GBIF.org in 2022-23, along with high-quality data and metadata
Data is dedicated to the public domain under an open CC0 designation