Biosecurity research portal: connecting key questions to research

Abstract: Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity & Risk Analysis (CEBRA) plans to implement a research portal, or digital library, that captures biosecurity resource from a range of content sources. CEBRA is targeting grey literature – that is, research that bypasses traditional publishing workflows and business models. CEBRA is already working with research repositories sourced from research, government and industry organisations. Grey literature sources are many – we discuss our approach to eliciting content sources and managing content ‘pipelines’ sustainably. We take the opportunity to encourage interest from potential content providers in the project, with a view to ensuring a rich and robust content flow into the digital library. We also demonstrate innovative designs for accessing and analysing the harvested content. Taxonomy-driven search and browse features address the inherent problems of language ambiguity for biosecurity concepts (names of pests, pathways, commodities, controls, etc.). The same metadata structures can be used to build graphical representations of the key concepts in documents. Graphical and analytical tools can be developed by the project team and external parties to answer key biosecurity questions, elicited during the project. The research portal can be used to not only discover information that addresses key questions, but also to measure and report gaps and overlaps in the biosecurity research endeavour. The portal should be a useful reference for informing research and policy design and priorities. Taxonomies developed as part of the project are also available in standard vocabulary formats for reuse in other biosecurity management and information systbiosecurity questions, elicited during the project. The research portal can be used to not only discover information that addresses key questions, but also to measure and report gaps and overlaps in the biosecurity research endeavour. The portal should be a useful reference for informing research and policy design and priorities. Taxonomies developed as part of the project are also available in standard vocabulary formats for reuse in other biosecurity management and information systems. Presented at ICBI Congress, 1-4 May 2023, Christchurch, "Aggregating & organising knowledge" stream, day 2.