V2P2, the first Italian Open Access Repository on plant-microbe interactions | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)

"The purpose of the 'V2P2 repository' project is to create an open access IT platform to store, preserve and make accessible different types of scientific data produced by the Institute of Plant Virology (IVV) and the Institute of Plant Protection (IPP) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). The third essential partner of this project, the Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth (CERIS) – CNR, is providing the consortium with its technical support and its experience in building up and managing open access repositories. The project has been partially funded by the Italian Government “MIUR Progetti annuali, L.6/2000, D.D. 369/Ric. Del 26/06/2012”.   In more than fifty years of research activity, IVV and IPP have produced a huge quantity of data, but only a small part has been presented at conferences or published in scientific articles, leaving the largest one unknown and stored in the archives. The vast majority of these unused research data is not yet in digital format: e.g. 16,500 high-definition image prints, 14,600 glass plate negatives, 33,000 film negatives and 40,000 b/w and colour slides showing plant viral infections, plant disease symptoms, insect vectors, plant viral particles, soil fungi, mycorrhized roots, ultrastructure of plant cells, etc. The V2P2repository is designed not only to preserve and share high-resolution images, but also to digitize Grey Literature (books of abstract, posters, logs, notes, laboratory notebooks) and share data about the IVV collection of plant viruses and phytoplasma (WFCC #1057).   The repository architecture is based on open-source software frameworks, such as Fedora Commons, as a storage backend, and Drupal CMS combined with Islandora, as a frontend. Metadata are based on the Dublin Core model and the Darwin Core standards and exposed via OAI-PMH. Relationships are created following the FAO's Agricultural Ontology Service ..."