We support your Grant applications

Do you intend to submit a project proposal that includes Scratchpads?
We can help you!

Scratchpads provide an open access infrastructure that facilitates the organisation and mobilisation of biodiversity data over the web. Scratchpads are supported by major projects and organisations. It is, however, through the support and contributions of the growing community of users that Scratchpads will continue to be a sustainable virtual research environment. Scratchpads current or prospective users are encouraged to prepare and submit research proposals which involve the Scratchpads infrastructure.
The Scratchpads team will contribute to the preparation and support the submission of any research project proposal that intends to use Scratchpads either in terms of infrastructure or content.


We can provide:

  1. Conceptual analysis of the Scratchpads project
  2. Technical documentation of Scratchpads
  3. Documentation on the state of the art regarding virtual research environments
  4. Documentation on the added value of Scratchpads to the research community
  5. Statistical data on Scratchpads usage


Also on a case by case evaluation:

  • A letter of intent to support the project can be provided
  • Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) can be signed between Scratchpads and your Institution.

Below you can find a small paragraph that can be included in the Data management/sharing policy section of your grants:

Scratchpads are a system of hosted web sites supporting data sharing within the broad field of natural history development which is currently funded by the EU FP7 project ViBRANT (http://vbrant.eu Project No. 261532). The Scratchpad project provides the computer infrastructure and users provide the content which, by default, is published under a Creative Commons by-sa-nc licence. Copyright and ownership of the data remain with the data creator and do not pass to the Scratchpad project. Web sites support appropriate data standards, such as Darwin Core, and provide APIs for indexing by portals such as GBIF and EoL. The sites are also fully indexed by Google and similar search engines. Current project funding runs to the end of 2013 and London's Natural History Museum guarantees continued basic support for at least a further 5 years.

If you intend to submit a grant proposal that involves Scratchpads please let us know so by sending us the outline of your project to support@scratchpads.eu

Please note that use of the infrastructure does not require that we are partners nor that we expect any funding. If you need to develop additional features then please contact us at the earliest possible stage so that we can advise the best way of achieving your goals.