title: India Biodiversity Portal: An integrated, interactive and participatory biodiversity informatics platform.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This paper describes a growing biodiversity platform, launched in 2008, which organizes knowledge on the biodiversity of India. The main objective and originality of the India Biodiversity Portal (IBP) is to aggregate curated biodiversity data of different kinds (e.g. distribution maps, temporal distribution or life history) in an integrated platform where amateurs and experts can easily interact.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Since its launch, the platform has seen an exceptional increase in both user activity and biodiversity data. Currently the portal has descriptions of over 20,400 species, and has aggregated approximately 1,280,000 observations covering more than 30,000 species, which already constitutes a unique source of information for scientists and stakeholders in conservation. Over 8500 users have registered on the portal. The amount of data generated and to be generated in the next few years by this portal will certainly help the effective implementation of biodiversity conservation and management in one of the most ecologically diverse countries in the world.
authors.affiliation: Strand Life Sciences, Bangalore, India.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vattakaven
authors.affiliation: French Institute of Pondicherry, Puducherry, India; Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Gangtok, India.
authors.forename: Rohit M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: French Institute of Pondicherry, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Dhandapani
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Balasubramanian
authors.affiliation: French Institute of Pondicherry, Puducherry, India; UMR AMAP, IRD, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Maxime
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Réjou-Méchain
authors.affiliation: French Institute of Pondicherry, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Gowrappan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Muthusankar
authors.affiliation: French Institute of Pondicherry, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Brahmasamudra Ranganna
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Ramesh
authors.affiliation: Strand Life Sciences, Bangalore, India.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Prabhakar
keywords: Biodiversity; Biodiversity data; Biodiversity informatics; Citizen science; Conservation; Crowd-sourcing; Data; India; Information te﻿chnology; Open data; Public participation in scientific research; Species distribution; Species information