Ornithologists frequently collect avian tissue samples to study various aspects of birds’ biology and ecology.
There are various ways of increasing reproducibility in science - e.g. presence of multiple data repositories collecting raw data. None of these repositories aim to collect or store information on the presence of samples (sample descriptions) that could be used (unpublished samples) or reused (published samples) in different projects, by different researchers or even in different study fields. Moreover, reusing samples from many projects might result in interesting multi-species, long-term or large-scale studies.
The collaborations between sample owners and researchers reusing samples from various study fields could significantly increase the research impact or could foster interdisciplinary research with a wide range of applications. Importantly, these collaborations would be mutually beneficial for both researchers providing samples and those reusing them.
To facilitate the reuse of avian samples worldwide, we introduce the AviSample Network database with the main aims to collect, store and provide access to avian sample descriptions.
We believe that the use of the AviSample Network database will yield a broad range of studies including multi-species and large-scale projects and will help create research networks between ornithologists from across the globe.
On behalf of the AviSample Network team,