Introduction

Keeping WoRMS up-to-date is a continuous process. New information is entered daily by the taxonomic editors and by the members of our data management team. Often data also come in from contributions of large datasets, such as global or regional species lists.

The content of WoRMS is controlled by taxonomic and thematic experts, not by database managers. WoRMS has an editorial management system where each taxonomic group is represented by an expert who has the authority over the content, and is responsible for controlling the quality of the information. Each of these main taxonomic editors can invite several specialists of smaller groups within their area of responsibility to join them.

The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. It is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and all its related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data.

Content-wise, the Aphia structure can roughly be divided into 10 modules: taxonomy, distribution, traits, specimen information, vernacular names, notes, links, images, identification keys and sources.

This resource is aimed at taxonomic editors and thematic experts and includes a series of video tutorials, ordered following the 10 modules mentioned above, that illustrate how to perform the most common editing activities in the system, both on the technical and content side of the database.

Find the editing issue you are looking for in the modules below and click on the link to watch the video tutorial.