How to contribute to B-NEAT
Introduction
B-NEAT caters for scientists and persons involved in marine monitoring in the Baltic and the North East Atlantic. The web site is maintained by active marine biologists in the area. Experts on the different groups of organisms maintain the species lists and the other information on taxon sheets. Anyone with illustrative images, videos and other material is welcome to contribute. Since B-NEAT is user driven your contribution is very important.
There are four types of users/contributors to B-NEAT
Anyone using the internet can browse the web site and download species lists and images (with copyright restrictions)
Contributors of images and videos can upload images and videos, add texts about the images and edit and delete his or her own material – a username and password is needed
A smaller group of ”experts” can in addition edit information about species
B-NEAT administrators can edit everything and also add and delete species names
Change history
Please note that all changes in B-NEAT, e.g. the addition of images and changes in texts on taxon sheets are recorded. The records can be found at the end of each taxon sheet and also under the heading Change history on the left menu of the start page. The latest added images show up on the start page.
How to get a user identity and a password
Send an e-mail to with your contact details and a short description of how you can contribute to B-NEAT. Please include a fax number to which the password and user identity can be sent. If you do not have a fax we can send you regular mail or give you a phone call. You will also receive a guide for adding material to B-NEAT – it is very easy. The normal procedure is that a person first gets rights to contribute images and videos and at a later stage the right to edit the content of taxon sheets.
About contribution of images and video
Please contribute images for any organism in B-NEAT. There is no restriction of the number of images per taxon but more than ten is seldom useful. Most important are organisms that are not yet well illustrated. Before you consider contribution make sure that you understand the implications for copyright holders by reading the Copyright notice (link to this page).
All types of high quality images are requested, e.g.
Images of the whole organism
Images showing details important for identification
Images showing interesting behaviour
Images of live organisms as well as organisms preserved with different preservatives (Lugol’s, formalin, glutardialdehyde etc.)
Images obtained using different techniques for contrast enhancement, e.g. phase contrast, interference contrast and standard light microscopy.
Images of organisms observed in the fluorescence microscope
Natural fluorescence
Fluorescence from different stains such as DAPI, Calcofluor etc.
Video is especially useful for showing behaviour. It is also useful showing an organism at different focus levels. Taking several photographs at different z-level (focus) and stitching them together in the computer is one way to achieve a useful film.
Please use arrows and other markers where appropriate. Scale bars are very useful in images.
About manipulations of images and video
With the software and computers available today it is tempting to manipulate images to make them “better” or more “beautiful” in some way. This is allowed for images contributed to B-NEAT but it must be clearly stated in the caption for the image that it has been manipulated. Contrast and light adjustments to make images more similar to what you see in the microscope are not considered manipulations.
