Preface


Biodiversity research aims at comprehending the totality and variability of or-
ganisms, their morphology, genetics, life history, habitats and geographical ranges.
It usually refers to biological diversity at three levels: genetics, species, and
ecology. Biodiversity is an outstanding domain that deals with heterogeneous
datasets and concepts generated from a large number of disciplines in order to
build a coherent picture of the extend of life on earth. The presence of such
a myriad of data resources makes integrative biodiversity research increasingly
important, but at the same time very challenging. It is severely strangled by
the way data and information are made available and handled today. Seman-
tic Web techniques have shown their potential to enhance data interoperability,
discovery, and integration by providing common formats to achieve a formalized
conceptual environment, but have not been widely applied to address open data
management issues in the biodiversity domain.
    The 2nd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity (S4BioDiv)
thus aimed to bring together computer scientists and biologists working on Se-
mantic Web approaches for biodiversity and related areas such as agriculture or
agro-ecology. The goal was to exchange experiences, build a state of the art of
realizations and challenges and reuse and adapt solutions that have been pro-
posed in other domains. The focus was on presenting challenging issues and
solutions for the design of high quality biodiversity information systems based
on Semantic Web techniques. The workshop was a full-day event on October
22nd co-located with the 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC
2017), October 21-25, Vienna, Austria.
    In total, 13 paper submissions presenting new research results and ongoing
projects have been submitted. All of these were reviewed by at least three mem-
bers of the program committee. Out of the submitted contributions, 6 full papers
and 4 poster papers have been accepted for presentation at the workshop and
publication in these proceedings.
    The program included two keynote talks highlighting two vital and chal-
lenging topics related to biodiversity research and Open Science in general.
Alison Specht, director of the Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Bio-
diversity (CESAB), talked about ”Engaging the Domain Expert: Is it just a
Dream?”. Oscar Corcho, full professor at the Ontology Engineering Group, ETSI
Informáticos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain presented his thoughts
”Towards Reproducible Science: A few Building Blocks from my Personal Ex-
perience”. To stimulate interdisciplinary debate, the workshop encompassed a
one-hour panel discussing controversial topics in the field.
    We would like to thank the ISWC workshop chairs Aidan Hogan and Valentina
Presutti for their kind support. We are also grateful to the workshop’s program
committee consisting of
    Birgitta König-Ries (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany)
   Ramona Walls (University of Arizona, USA)
   Jens Kattge (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany)
   Salima Benbernou (Université Paris 5, France)
   Harald Sack (FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany)
   Elizabeth Arnaud (Bioversity International)
   Isabelle Mougenot (University of Montpellier, France)
   Pierre Larmande (IRD, France)
   Pythagoras Karampiperis (AgroKnow, Greece)
   Konstantin Todorov, LIRMM (University of Montpellier, France)
   Brandon Whitehead (GISP, CABI, UK)
   Pierre Bonnet (CIRAD, France)
   Pelin Yilmaz (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Germany)
   Pier Luigi Buttigieg (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Ger-
   many)
   Mark Schildhauer (National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis,
   USA)
   Dag Endresen (GBIF Norway, Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway)
   Pascal Neveu (INRA, France)
   Alsayed Algergawy (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany)
   Naouel Karam (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
   Friederike Klan (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany)
   Clement Jonquet (LIRMM, University of Montpellier, France)

We very much appreciate the financial support kindly provided by the Collabora-
tive Research Centre AquaDiva (CRC 1076) funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (DFG). Finally, we thank all authors that submitted their work to
the workshop.




       Alsayed Algergawy, Naouel Karam, Friederike Klan & Clement Jonquet
                                                          S4BioDiv Chairs
                                                           September 2017