DiSSCo UK FAQs

Table of contents

About the programme

What is DiSSCo UK?  

DiSSCo UK stands for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK and is a partnership of organisations across the UK, working together to harness the digital potential of their natural science collections. 

DiSSCo UK is a £155.6 million, 10-year programme which will unlock impact by digitising UK natural science collections, creating a national digital research infrastructure.

The programme is funded through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) infrastructure fund and led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), working in partnership with the Natural History Museum. DiSSCo UK is one part of a wider £473 million investment from UKRI investing in world-class facilities, equipment, and resources that are essential for researchers and innovators to do ground-breaking work. In March 2024, the Government announced DiSSCo UK, subject to business case approvals, and in June 2026 the programme was officially approved, with the programme officially announced in July 2026.

Through digitisation, coordination, catalysis and community building it will deliver a generational step change in sector capability, creating a sovereign dataset and infrastructure that maximises the impact of natural science data to help address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change and enable innovation and economic growth.

UK natural science collections include biological, paleontological and geological specimens accompanied by information such as what they are, and where and when they were collected. They are vitally important because they provide a unique physical record of how and why our planet is changing, and the impacts of human activity, including providing baselines of change and the ability to identify solutions from and for nature.

DiSSCo UK objectives

DiSSCo UK’s objectives are:

  • To unlock the full scientific, research and economic potential of the UK’s world-leading natural science collections, creating a national research infrastructure that will help address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change and inform sustainable policy and investment. 
  • To deliver a nationwide step-change in the UK’s capability and capacity to digitise its world-class collections, transforming access, and strengthening the sector. 
  • To drive UK economic growth and innovation by leveraging natural science collections data and technology to foster a new ecosystem of world class research. 

These can be summarised as objectives for insight, capability, and innovation.

What work has been done to date? 

The planning phase for DiSSCo UK is underway, building on scoping work funded by AHRC Infrastructure for Digital Arts and Humanities funding – this scoping work has already enabled:  

  • Development of the UK network and communications  
  • A beta DiSSCo UK data access repository underpinned by GBIF, aggregating >18 million records [as of July 2026].
  • An instance of the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) alongside supporting documentation to support organisations publishing their data to GBIF.
  • Surveys to understand what’s in UK natural science collections and digital readiness, and further evidence to support the business case 
  • Pilots of training and guidance for digitisation 
  • Promotional and communications materials including a Blueprint to outline the need for a national programme, and a Science Review to promote the impact of UK digitised collections.

What is the timeline for the 10-year programme? 

The programme will take a phased and scaled approach to allow continual development and improvement. Key dates and milestones include:

  • June 2026: Programme approval
  • July 2026-28: First round of digitisation projects begins, with four hubs digitising botany and invertebrate collections
  • December 2026: Catalysis centre launch with establishment of innovation projects
  • Spring 2027: Second funding call live
  • 2027/28: Scale-up of catalysis centre to optimise digitisation workflows and focus on research impacts and commercialisation opportunities
  • 2028-31: Second round of digitisation projects begins
  • 2030: Third funding call live
  • 2031-34: Third round of digitisation projects begins
  • 2033: Fourth funding call live
  • 2034-36: Fourth round of digitisation projects begins

Throughout the programme we will periodically launch additional funding calls supporting digitisation-on-demand projects and research to accelerate the impact of digitised collections.

What are the expected benefits/impacts of the DiSSCo UK programme? 

  • Digitising UK natural science collections is expected to generate research and economic benefit for the UK over 30 years, across areas like conservation, invasive species, agricultural research and development, medicines discovery and mineral extraction. 
  • DiSSCo UK data will enable more efficient and effective research. Access online will enable savings on time and money otherwise spent on physical visits and promote new research on larger and more diverse data sets. 
  • UK Collections data are in demand. In 2022 on average more than 2 research publications per day cited NHM collections data. DiSSCo UK will vastly expand the scale of data available and increase its visibility and impact. 
  • DiSSCo UK will make the UK’s natural science collections available openly to anyone, including communities of origin, and open out natural science collections to support multi-disciplinary research and engagement. 
  • The digital data central to DiSSCo UK will enable new connections with schools, volunteers and citizen science programmes, support public engagement activity, and encourage lifelong learning.        
  • DiSSCo UK will improve skills and capabilities for digitisation nationwide, acting as a pathfinder of workflows and benefit for wider heritage collections and embedding sustainable practice. 

How has DiSSCo UK considered environmental impacts?

DiSSCo UK is a low-carbon programme compared to many other infrastructure projects. During the business case process we worked with a consultancy firm to understand the programme’s carbon emissions and environmental impact and identify mitigations.

The programme is also expected to have positive impacts on the environment, through better targeting of physical visits to collections and enabling new environmental research.

Funding

How will digitisation funding be distributed?

  • DiSSCo UK offers opportunities for natural science collections of all types and sizes to bid for digitisation funding over the 10-year programme, through a phased, open bidding process.
  • There are four funding calls over the course of the programme, offering regular opportunities to join over time.   The first funding call is complete, and the successful projects will run from 2026 to 2028.
  • Phasing is required to distribute spend, resource and benefit across the life of the programme, meeting the financial profile required by funding bodies. This also enables learning and iteration from earlier phases throughout the life of the programme. Those not eligible or unsuccessful in the first round of funding calls may reapply in later phases, and successful bidders can apply to future calls.
  • The funding bid process is managed by AHRC, with bids assessed by an independent Assessment Panel.
  • The structure for bids is that ‘hub’ and ‘node’ organisations form partnerships to put together bids for delivery, with a smaller fund expected during the life of the programme to enable researchers to request digitisation of collections to support targeted research projects.
  • Larger-scale collections with resources to support funding bids and meet other requirements will self-select as ‘hubs’ and work with nodal partners. Collections which are, for example, not large enough to employ a digitisation team for a minimum period of 18 months+ will be able to partner with hubs to bid for funding and deliver digitisation.

What areas does the funding cover?

The funding includes: 

  • Digitisation – mostly mass scale but some ‘on demand’  
  • Technical infrastructure – to enable the storage, publishing, and access of UK specimen data and associated images
  • A Catalysis centre – a research unit to accelerate digitisation (e.g., through exploration of AI and machine learning in digitisation workflows) and demonstrate impact 

The remaining budget includes contingency in line with government requirements, and funding for DiSSCo UK management including network activities, communications and administering funding bids. 

What will be covered by the digitisation funding?

Digitisation funding is expected to cover:

  • People (digitisation and associated roles such as project management / hub coordination)
  • Digitisation equipment (may be centrally procured and provided in some instances)
  • Recruitment advertising
  • Digitisation consumables (e.g. barcodes and labels etc.)
  • Transport (of collections for digitisation if relevant)
  • Limited scope to include other expenses if these are essential to digitisation e.g. minor furniture or conservation costs

We expect the following to be centrally provided:

  • Training including data mobilisation
  • Data storage and access infrastructure
  • Programme management and communications including network meetings and governance meetings

What is not in scope for digitisation funding?

The digitisation funding does not cover:

  • Physical refit of spaces
  • Other staff costs such as senior leadership
  • Most types of conservation or physical collections management costs

The funding is only for digitisation of natural science specimens. This does not include living collections, observational data, library and/or archive collections.

How are collection types selected for inclusion in funding calls?

DiSSCo UK will take a balanced portfolio approach to prioritisation over time, taking into account many factors including:

  • Size of the collections
  • Geographic coverage across the UK
  • Feasibility and readiness – which collections can be effectively digitised at scale
  • Research impact and other benefits

Botany and entomology collections were selected in the first round primarily based on confidence in delivery as there are established workflows for these collections, they are the most sizable collections across the UK, and the impact that can be demonstrated during programme evaluations.

What is the depth/level of digitisation that can be applied for in the bidding process?

DiSSCo UK is focused on specimen level and collection level digitisation. In-depth analysis of individual specimens is not covered.

Is there any funding available for physical infrastructure?   

The funding will cover the provision of digitisation workstations, critical consumables such as barcodes, and occasionally associated furniture where this is critical to the digitisation processes. It will not cover the physical refit of spaces or capital works, nor extensive collections rehousing or expansion. 

What organisations are in scope for DiSSCo UK funding?

Organisations must be in the UK to receive funding. UK overseas territories and Crown dependencies are not currently able to apply for digitisation funding, however these communities may be able to use DiSSCo UK technical infrastructure to support their data publishing activities, e.g., by using DiSSCo UK data and image storage systems and the DiSSCo UK data portal (dependant on volume and costs). The DiSSCo UK programme team may, on a case-by-case basis, be able to provide remote support to help communities use these systems and assist in leveraging other funding sources to support the digitisation of their collections.

Programme structure

What are hubs?

Hubs are self-selecting and are expected to identify and partner with other organisations to form consortia for bids.

  • Definition: Institutions with the ambition to digitise their significant collections, support partners with digitisation, and whose infrastructure is well placed to be transformed in support of these goals.
  • Benefits: Digitised collections, new and sustained forms of impact, enhanced infrastructure (hardware, tech. systems, training), leadership, synergistic opportunities (e.g. AI, partnerships, revenue, services, training).
  • Tasks: Will manage and distribute funding and resources, meeting digitisation and data publishing targets according to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and audit requirements.
  • Selection: Self-selecting and competitively confirmed by peer review of institutional or consortium funding bids, based on quality, readiness, and ability to meet requirements.
  • Support: Funding, training, protocols, digitisation equipment and consumables, project management.
  • Requirements: Digitisation-ready collections, leadership commitment, space, network infrastructure, HR support, finance/legal support, potential partners.

What are nodes?

‘Nodes’ are typically smaller collections who will align with hubs for bidding and resourcing.

  • Definition: UK institutions with the capacity to identify priority collections and (usually) host digitisation – often for a shorter period – helping develop project(s) aligned with a hub organisation.
  • Benefits: Selected digitised collections, new sustained forms of impact, synergistic opportunities (e.g. AI, partnerships, revenue, services, training).
  • Tasks: Contribute to bids, prepare collections, and usually support local digitisation.
  • Selection: Competitively identified by peer review of consortium proposals, based on quality, readiness and impact.
  • Support: Funding, training, protocols, digitisation equipment and consumables, project management.
  • Requirements: Digitisation-ready collections, leadership commitment, capacity to work with hubs.

How do nodes connect with hubs and access funding?

Hub organisations lead the funding applications and will need to include other organisations as nodes within those bids. Before each funding call, ARHC holds matchmaking workshops to enable potential hub and node organisations to identify each other and form a partnership. In future funding calls, hubs may be asked to self-identify prior to the launch of the call, so that their information can be shared with the wider consortium. To ensure node organisations have the opportunity to participate in DiSSCo UK, there will be demands on hubs to work with multiple nodes, and stipulations that specific geographic regions are covered across the bids.

Most digitisation will be via the main hub and node digitisation, but there will be an additional ‘nodal access fund’ that nodes can access directly. The practicalities of this funding are still being developed, but it will likely be used to target gaps in the main funding, e.g., geographic areas not covered by a hub.

Will DiSSCo UK ‘evolve’ over the 10-year programme as we learn from digitisation projects?

We will complete a number of formal evaluations with an M&E consultant, including a process evaluation that will identify lessons learnt, alongside regular monitoring of programme KPIs to inform how we can improve future funding tranches and overall delivery.

We expect digitisation workflows and best practice to be refined and updated throughout the programme. The Catalysis centre will focus on improving the speed of digitisation and exploring the use of technology in digitisation e.g., using machine learning to extract information on specimen labels.

What is DiSSCo UK’s relationship with DiSSCo EU? 

DiSSCo EU aims to create a new model for one European collection that digitally unifies all European natural science assets, sharing common access, curation, policies and practices across countries while ensuring that all the data complies with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data).  DiSSCo UK will draw on the digital services provided by DiSSCo EU, including the use of specimen-level identifiers and data annotation tools.

In addition to being a national programme in the UK, DiSSCo UK is the national node for DiSSCo EU.   

How does DiSSCo UK complement other UK infrastructures and initiatives? 

DiSSCo UK is a critical component of a UKRI-wide federated national digital research infrastructure built on user-driven and FAIR principles, adding significant value to other investments, and fully aligning with the URKI Digital Research Infrastructure strategy and trusted research guidance.

DiSSCo UK builds on the AHRC’s experience of successfully developing and delivering major distributed infrastructure projects with partners. These include CoSTAR (2022-), a £75.6M investment to drive innovation in the screen sector, through which AHRC developed a market and need driven approach to a distributed infrastructure; and Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS, 2024-), an £80M distributed heritage science research infrastructure and data service through which AHRC have developed funding mechanisms to support disbursing funds to non/IRO HEIs.

There is significant complementarity with BBSRC and MRC’s BioFAIR, and NERC’s planned Environmental Data Research UK. These infrastructures will drive accessibility and connectivity for digital research across the life and environmental sciences, with DiSSCo UK providing a critical mass of vital data for that research. There is active collaboration between DiSSCo UK and these other programmes and Research Councils, to ensure cross-disciplinary benefits for researchers and avoid duplication. 

How will DiSSCo UK dovetail with Subject Specialist Networks? 

Specialists and community representatives will be consulted during the planning and delivery phases of the programme. We expect representatives of the DiSSCo UK community to have a seat at the Delivery Board, once established.

Planning and preparation

What should organisations do to prepare for DiSSCo UK?

We would encourage you to:

  • Engage with senior stakeholders at your organisation to establish buy-in on the importance of your natural science collection and the value of digitisation
  • Join the DiSSCo UK mailing list, and attend the online DiSSCo UK community workshops
  • Review the digitisation guides, which include a number of practical guides to planning and preparing for a digitisation project
  • Talk to potential partner organisations in your locality about the programme and potential bids
  • If digitisation of natural history collections is not already in your strategy, we would encourage you to talk to your leadership about the programme.  
  • The DiSSCo UK data portal is powered by GBIF, with GRSciColl (the Global Registry of Science Collections) determining the institutions and specimens that appear on the portal (see below). It is essential for all UK institutions to have up-to-date records on GRSciColl to improve visibility of UK collections and to ensure all digitised specimen data appears on our portal. Whether data is available to publish immediately, or will be available in a few years as the national digitisation programme ramps up, creating a record on GRSciColl is the first step in this process. You can do so here by suggesting a new institution and filling in the form with details of your institution.  

How can my organisation be involved? 

DiSSCo UK has a mailing list to keep partners up to date. If you would like to join the mailing list, please contact us using the contact details below.  Through the mailing list we send regular comms, organise community events, and request feedback and input from the community, for example through Expressions of Interest and surveys.

There will be four main opportunities throughout the programme to receive funding for mass digitisation, with additional opportunities for digitisation on demand. See above sections for more information on how to receive funding.

What does ‘digitisation-ready’ mean?

Essentially this means collections are curated to a sufficient standard to make it easy to digitise. In practice this will mean different things for different collection types. 

In general, collections should be well organised (e.g. taxonomically), and in a state of preservation such that they can be easily marked up (with temporary digitisation barcodes) to aid processing and suitably returned to their collection. Pre-digitisation curation should triage pest management issues or contamination, special handling requirements, or problematic organisation to put systems in place to handle these exceptions in advance of digitisation.  

More detailed guidance on collections requirements and preparation will be provided to support funding calls.

What resources are available? 

Many resources, including the programme blueprint, promotional video, news and case studies, and the UK collections dashboard, are available on the resources page on this website. 

Training and digitisation guides, funded by DiSSCo Prepare, COST Mobilise, and AHRC, are available here.

We retain recordings of our community events. If you would like to access these recordings, please contact us at dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk.

Prior to, and during the funding calls, AHRC will run workshops for interested organisations to assist with the process, and additional guidance will be posted to the DiSSCo UK website.

How will training and support be provided for digitisation?  

Training will use a train-the-trainer approach to build capacity across the UK and establish a community of practice. There will be a dedicated training role within the delivery team to design and coordinate training, guidance and support for digitising organisations. We will provide blended learning resources, including in‑person and online training, a ‘helpdesk’ for troubleshooting issues, and support to embed programme tools, platforms, and workflows into organisational processes.

Digitisation

What data will be digitised as part of DiSSCo UK? 

DiSSCo UK will focus on releasing key data fields from high numbers of objects – for example what (taxonomy); when (date); who (collector data); and where (geographic data).    

DiSSCo UK will apply consistent community data standards to ensure that data are findable and interoperable, and will use barcodes to apply specimen level identifiers.   

DiSSCo UK will usually take 2D images that include object labels – it is likely that more data will be released from these label images using technologies such as Optical Character Recognition.  

What is DiSSCo UK’s approach to working with different Collections Management Systems?  

We are aware that there are a variety of CMS and databases in use across the community. We will be creating a centralised data storage and publishing infrastructure that will integrate with the different systems used across UK collections. DiSSCo UK’s approach to data mobilisation will be system-agnostic as far as possible, using community data standards and tools such as GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit to enable consistent data release. 

Will DiSSCo UK capture genetic data?   

DiSSCo UK will not fund the capture of genetic data, however the DiSSCo UK data infrastructure will facilitate capture and linkage of many data types. 

We are working closely with genomic data initiatives such as the Darwin Tree of Life (DTOL) and UK Barcode of Life (UKBOL) projects to support the release of data and increase access for genetics research.

The work of DiSSCo UK is highly complementary to these initiatives as it provides information on UK collections that may be more suitable to be part of these genomic initiatives such as their collection age and state of preservation.

Will digitisation cover specimens that have limited provenance or will it only be applied to specimens that have full collection information? 

Digitisation levels will vary. Where possible, all label information will be digitised, but there will also be broader, collection-level digitisation.

Collections that overall have insufficient metadata or are not in a sufficient state of preservation will not be digitised. Guidance will be provided alongside funding calls – we recognise that many collections have variable data.

Will DiSSCo UK provide assistance/guidance for pre-digitisation work such as curation, setting up CMS to ensure items are ready to be digitised? 

DiSSCo UK will not be setting up a national CMS or a CMS at each collection. However, digitisation funding will include funding for roles that support the curatorial work needed to digitise a collection, and the central team will offer guidance and support with this.

What is the level of digitisation for each specimen?

The specimen information attached to each label will be digitised, alongside an image of the specimen. At a minimum, the information digitised will include scientific classification and a unique identifier, but it may also include locality, collector name and date, and other information found on the label.

In some instances, there will be collection-level digitisation, whereby what is held in each collection is described but individual specimen level information will not be digitised.

Information about relevant digitisation data standards will be shared as part of the detailed funding call guidance.

If we are already digitising, how can we best prepare for DiSSCo UK?

You can find guides for workflows and best practice here. As you generate data, aligning with the Darwin Core standard will simplify the publishing process later. Further guidance will be provided with each funding call.

Are there specific agreements or licenses that must be used for data sharing?

DiSSCo UK data and images will be released under Creative Commons licensing. This meets best practice for usable and impactful open research data; and meets the requirements of the aggregators we are working with for data access.

Data and images generated through DiSSCo UK are open by default. However, there will be a policy and process for exceptions (e.g., for sensitive collections information). Decisions about exceptions will be subject to a balanced view of benefits (e.g. the information may be of benefit to conservationists) and risks (e.g. it may be used by poachers), taking into account what related information is already in the public domain.​

Catalysis Centre

What is a Catalysis Centre?  

The Catalysis Centre will accelerate digitisation and expand the societal, scientific, and economic impact of digital UK collections. Central to this innovation will be the adoption of new technologies, including AI to extract, process and integrate the vast amount of data being generated by DiSSCo UK and associated activities, and robotics to help accelerate the digitisation of specimens. AI, robotics and related tools to capture new information on the natural world have already been deployed at pilot level, and the Catalysis Centre will will connect with the wider UK digital research ecosystem to bring experts from a variety of domains to operationalise these approaches. The Centre will work with the complementary programme, infrastructure and digitisation hubs to prioritise, test and deploy innovations.

The Catalysis Centre will also explore the range of services that the UK community might offer on our data. Approaches like machine learning and computer vision are transforming the audiences of our data, synthesising this into a variety of resources that add value to other stakeholders including policy makers and industry. The Catalysis Centre will function as an incubator for these ideas.   

What is the timeline for the Catalysis Centre work?

Years 1-3: Digitisation acceleration by optimising imaging, transcription, and quality assurance pipelines

Years 3-5: Digitisation innovation continues with additional build of applied services and products

Years 6-10: Further digitisation innovation for new collection types and securing long-term sustainability of services

How will the DiSSCo UK community get access to the experimentation in the Catalysis Centre?

The outputs of the Catalysis Centre will accelerate the digitisation process and automate transcription, so there will be collaboration with hubs to help them adopt the technologies in their projects.

We will also share the details on the technologies with the community, for example in community workshops, at conferences, via our website, and through training sessions.

Technical Infrastructure  

What is the technical infrastructure for DiSSCo UK?

The DiSSCo UK infrastructure has three main functions:   

  • To facilitate the movement and publication of specimen data and image media from participating institutions to aggregation services, where they can be accessed as FAIR data.
  • To assist with the management of institutional specimen data and image media, including relevant long-term storage and permissions control for protected assets.  
  • To provide digital routes to support the access and processing of specimen data, especially text extraction and segmentation from label specimen images as part of the digitisation process, and to perform research on the data as part of the DiSSCo UK Catalysis Centre’s objectives.   

The DiSSCo UK infrastructure will utilise a mix of built, procured, and existing services to deliver this infrastructure.

Will there be an earth sciences data portal?

DiSSCo UK will not be creating a data portal specifically for earth sciences. Palaeontological specimens can be published to GBIF and we are continuing to explore the options for publishing geological and mineralogical data via existing platforms, for example through integration with DiSSCo EU’s DiSSCover platform.

How will each institution share their digitised collections with DiSSCo UK?

Digitised bioscience collections will be published to GBIF and will then appear on the DiSSCo UK portal. There are different routes for publishing data which will be dependent on the organisation’s needs, such as automated extraction from an organisational online portal or direct publishing to GBIF via the DiSSCo UK IPT.

See previous question regarding geo sciences.

If we have data hosted on a non-UK instance of GBIF, do we need to migrate this to the DiSSCo UK instance of GBIF?

No. Data on GBIF, regardless of how it’s published, will appear on the DiSSCo UK portal if you are a UK publisher with a GRSciColl record.

What does getting ‘digital ready’ look like for an institution that doesn’t currently have a CMS?

Aligning your data with Darwin Core and ensuring the data is easy to access and extract will simplify the publishing process when you have digitised specimens.

You can also ensure your organisation is discoverable on GBIF by creating a GRSciColl record and ensuring it’s up-to-date and has sufficient details about your organisation and the collections you hold.

How will DiSSCo UK protect the security of digitised data? 

We take data security very seriously and will have managed services for structured permissions and access to data. In procuring data storage and compute, DiSSCo UK will specify standards and follow best practices including, for example, access controls, backups, and recovery mechanisms.

We are talking to our peers in the UK and global culture sectors to learn lessons from recent cyber-security incidents.

Data Portal 

What data is included on this site? 

GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) is an open access infrastructure that aggregates biodiversity data from across the globe. This portal uses data uploaded to GBIF. 

The ‘Specimens’ page provides specimen data uploaded to GBIF from UK-based data publishers with an active GRSciColl (The Global Registry of Scientific Collections) record.   

The ‘Institutions’ page uses UK GRSciColl records and acts as a one-stop resource for UK natural science collections, improving the visibility of institutions.   

What filters have been applied to the data included on the specimen page? 

This portal comprises data from natural science collections; for records to show on the portal, they must be either a material sample, fossil specimen, or preserved specimen. All live or observational data is excluded. 

Data is included if it is published by a UK based GBIF publisher with an active GRSciColl record.   

Why do some non-UK institutions appear on the specimen pages? 

Some UK based GBIF publishers have datasets which include specimens from non-UK institutions. For example, this Protomyctophum tenisoni specimen from the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris can be found on this portal. This specimen was published by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which is based in the UK. They publish specimen data from Myctobase, a circumpolar database of mesopelagic fishes, which includes specimens from institutions in many different countries. We are looking at ways to exclude these kinds of specimens from our portal in future. 

How do I add or update information about my institution? 

To add your institution to the portal, you must create a GRSciColl record, which you can do here.   

There are two ways you can update your existing institutional information 

  1. Search for your institution on the DiSSCo UK Portal, and then click ‘Edit’ on the right hand side. This will take you through to the GrSciColl edit page, where you can suggest changes. 
  2. Search for your institutional page on the GBIF Registry. On the entry you want to edit, press the ‘Suggest’ button at the top of the page and update the chosen fields.  

Once you have pressed ‘Save’, the suggestions will be forwarded to the DiSSCo UK team and we will be able to accept the changes. Alternatively, you can email dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk with the adjustments you want made. 

How will data generated from the digitisation programme be published?  

Digitised data will be free, open and accessible through the national data portal and GBIF. Support will be available for partners in publishing data to the portal via GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit. 

My institution doesn’t appear in the correct location on your institution map, how do I fix this? 

The location of your institution on the map is taken from the latitude and longitude information in your GrSciColl record. Check that the details are correct, and update the information if not.* If you aren’t sure what your lat/long co-ordinates are, or if the details are correct and it still isn’t showing in the right place, you can email dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk,  and we will be able to help. 

*see the question above for details on how to update your GrSciColl record. 

Why are there fewer institutions on the DiSSCo UK dashboard compared to those listed on this site? 

Some GRSciColl records may be out of date, with institutions potentially merging or becoming inactive. If you know a collection is no longer active or the information provided is incorrect, please let us know as we intend GRSciColl to be an up-to-date source for information on UK natural science collections.   

In addition, not all UK institutions completed the collections survey distributed in 2021. If you would like your collections data to be included in the dashboard, please contact dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk to be sent the survey. 

How do I request that my institution’s details are removed from this site? 

Please contact dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk to remove your institutional data from the portal. Institutions excluded from the portal will be listed in the ‘What filters have been applied’ question to inform all users of missing data/data caveats. 

How do I access observation data from the UK? 

Observational data can be found on the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) portal. 

How do I access information about geological specimens held in UK collections? 

Fossil specimens which have been published to GBIF are included on this portal. Rocks, minerals, cores, meteorites and other geological material are not included on GBIF. We are working with the Earth Sciences community in the UK to scope out the requirements for a portal for Earth Science collections data. If you would like to be involved, please contact dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk. 

Contact Details 

How can I contact you?  

Please email us at dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk. You can also raise an issue on our GitHub page if you spot something on the website that needs updating.