Tela Botanica

Tela Botanica

Type	Non-governmental organization
Purpose	Botany
Headquarters	Montpellier
Location	Hérault
Leader	Daniel Mathieu
Website	www.tela-botanica.org
Remarks	See article for more details on formation.

Tela Botanica is a collaborative network of francophone botanists, 80% of whom live in France (about 28 000 enrolled at the end of 2016). It served as a model for the network of entomologists Tela Insecta, which is developing in partnership with Tela Botanica.

Context

Given the growing importance of the issues related to the protection of the planet's resources and the need for their sustainable exploitation, it is important that botany finds a preponderant place at the crossroads of the many disciplines that deal with knowledge of plants and the world vegetal: floristics, systematics, taxonomy, phytosociology, phytogeography, chorology, plant ecology, ethnobotany, etc.

The Tela Botanica network was created with the aim of supporting this renewal of botany in the French-speaking world.

History

The Tela Botanica network was created and is managed by an association of 1901 law: Association Tela Botanica. This association deposited its statutes on 14 December 1999 in the department of Hérault. Its founding members include three legal entities (the Société botanique de France, the Travel Guardian and ACEMAV) and the initiator of the project is Daniel Mathieu.

The headquarters of the association is located at the Institute of Botany of Montpellier (University Montpellier 2). In four years, the network doubled its number of registrants, whereas it took seven years to reach the ten thousandth registrant. The 20,000th member joined the association on April 22, 2013. By 2014, the network has approximately 24,000 registered members and approximately 13,000 pages of the site are accessed daily.

Aims

Its main objectives are:

• to create links between francophone botanists;
• to set up collective projects;
• to collect data to make available to botanists;
• to bring together the initiatives that contribute to the development of botany, including "digital botany".

Operation

The Tela Botanica network is aimed at all persons, whether natural or legal, interested in the knowledge and protection of the plant world, in an ethic of respect for nature, man and his environment. Its operation is based on two essential choices:

• the logic and ethics of the collaborative networks for the mode of participation of the members (cf the work of Jean-Michel Cornu);
• the massive use of ICT (information and communication technologies) as a means of exchanging among members through its internet portal of French-speaking botany.

All software and applications developed under the network are licensed under CeCILL. The data and documents are mainly distributed under a free Creative Commons license. A close collaboration is established with the french-speaking botanical portal of Wikipedia.

Registration for the Tela Botanica network is free of charge. It gives the possibility to use the logistical and technical means of the Network to set up and develop projects, to participate in the different groups animated within the network and to receive by e-mail the weekly newsletter of botanical news. Registration is done online from the Internet and a global mapping system can view the location of the 15,000 registered (as of June 8, 2011) of the network in more than 60 countries.

The network is run by an NGO which also manages the financial management of the project, with 10 employees (end of 2014), thanks to public (47%) and private (39%) contributions, supplemented by benefits and training 10%) or miscellaneous products (4%), and donations from members of the network, to 3% of resources (€18,000 in 2013). An important but unquantified part comes from the volunteering of the members, who have opportunities for expression, collaborative work and proposal in the forums and other advisory tools and databases and photos put in place by the network (eFlore, Online Notebook, newsletter ...). They can be consulted by the steering committee to obtain an opinion on important choices. They are a key element in the dynamics and life of the network. Tela Botanica publishes a weekly newsletter on botany, which is broadcast free of charge, exclusively via the Internet. This letter as well as the website are freely accessible and devoid of any publicity.

References