The European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) is a specific legal form that facilitates the establishment and operation of Research Infrastructures with European interest.

The Statutes rule the governance of MIRRI, according to the regulatory requirements of the ERIC and of the legal framework of Portugal, the Statutory Seat of the RI.

The Statutes will be submitted to the EC during Spring 2021 for final approval and constitution of the MIRRI-ERIC legal entity.

MIRRI is engaged to provide as much as open and free access as financially possible, especially for Member and Observer countries. However, for sustainability reasons, free-open access will not always be implemented, in which case user fees may apply, especially for users from countries that are not contributing Members or for those following a market-driven mode of access. MIRRI-ERIC will seek funding mechanisms to reduce the cost of access for users, for example through research collaborations or transnational access supported by EU-funded projects.

For the provision of services, MIRRI relies on the commitments that the partners acquire by signing the MIRRI-ERIC Partner Charter, including the targeted accession into their catalogues of new valuable resources, the provision of TNA or the participation in clusters of expertise, following appropriate quality standards.

Microbial resources, technological services and courses can be provided on-site or remote and will follow the “European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures”, which includes 3 modes of access: Excellence-driven, Market-driven and Technical need-driven. For the last two modes of access, a contract will be established between the User and MIRRI-ERIC, which will define the obligations and responsibilities of each party, confidentiality, and Intellectual Property management where necessary. These types of access will contribute to strengthening the innovation chain and the user has to cover the cost of the service or enter into a collaborative agreement with MIRRI, where both parties benefit from the collaboration.

The excellence-driven mode of access will be provided through open calls, where users need to fill in an application that will be evaluated based on scientific merit, type of institution (profit/non-profit) and membership (MIRRI-ERIC Member countries). Free or partially-free access will be provided to the best rated proposals.

Virtual tools, i.e. advanced data analysis, expert clusters forum, consultancy, webinars and tutorials, will require registration (registered CWE users). Depending on the type of institution (profit/non-profit), the membership status and the range of services requested, different pricing modalities will be offered to the users, with advantageous conditions to institutions from MIRRI-ERIC countries and non-profit organizations.

Scientific events organized by MIRRI-ERIC will also be subjected to fees, and discount rates will be available for users from MIRRI-ERIC countries, non-profit organizations and registered CWE users.

The Partner Charter defines criteria for the participation of microbial domain biological resource centres (mBRCs), institutions or individuals providing resources, services, training and expertise or participating in joint projects in MIRRI. Access to the document is provided here.

Adhering to the Partner Charter MIRRI Partners agree to comply with the following policies, that can be downloaded here:

• MIRRI-ERIC Data Management Policy
• MIRRI-ERIC Policy for compliance with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol
• MIRRI-ERIC Policy on biorisk assessment and biosecurity measures
• MIRRI-ERIC Accession Policy
• MIRRI-ERIC Policy on Intellectual Property Rights

The MIRRI Information System (MIRRI-IS)

The MIRRI Information System (MIRRI-IS) is the reference database and analysis platform of the Microbial Resources Research Infrastructure (MIRRI). It includes data from catalogues of partner Culture Collections (CCs) plus reference taxonomy databases and software tools for phylogenomic analysis of microorganisms collected and characterized by CCs.

In order to integrate all catalogues into one database, CCs have agreed on shared specifications of relevant information for the different resource types.

Guidelines including a description of the datasets have therefore been approved and published. CCs have finally submitted the data of their catalogues according to the shared specifications.

Format of MIRRI-IS specifications

Information included in one of the MIRRI-IS specifications is described on the basis of the following data:

• Name: the name assigned to the information.
• Description: a description of the meaning and contents of the information.
• Syntax: the syntax of the information, including e.g. its type and syntactic components. Not all information has an associated syntax.
• Values: the values allowed for the information, or a link to a reference list or nomenclature or ontology. Not all information has a restricted list of allowed values, e.g. free text information.
• Validation: the list of actions carried out by MIRRI in order to validate the information.
• Examples: some examples of valid data for the information.

Specifications for plasmids and for viruses also include the following data:

• Short name: a simplified version of the name, usually a single term following the camel format.
• Correspondence with Guidelines for microorganisms: specifies whether the information is also available in the specifications for microorganisms and the relative name.

Mandatory and non-mandatory information

At present, only some of the information included in the specifications are mandatory and they are highlighted in the specifications. MIRRI-IS will discard records missing mandatory data fields. All other data fields are strongly recommended and collections are invited to submit all data they have. The presence or absence of some non-mandatory information is a criterium for defining the quality of the submitted data and for ordering results of user queries.

Results of queries carried out on the the MIRRI-IS integrated catalogue will therefore be sorted by relevance first and then by completeness of data. A list of non-mandatory fields which are used for sorting results, have been defined for each resource type.

MIRRI-IS data specifications

Here, we report the list of approved documents as a reference for users willing to link their information systems to the MIRRI-IS through its APIs.

Microbial strains (archaea, bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi, microalgae).

• Specifications (version 3, 2022-04-07)
• Guide to create an Excel file for uploading data (version 2, 2020-06-01)
• Excel template (version 3, 2022-04-07)
• Data exchange format (JSON)
• Web Services (APIs)
• Dataverse platform

Plasmids

• Specifications (release candidate 1)

Viruses

• Specifications (release candidate 2)

The MIRRI web portal terms and conditions are intended to define the conditions governing the ediition and use of web pages and services located in the address www.mirri.org and also regulate such use. Any user accessing the information and services offered in that domain is subject to this document.

Furthermore, certain services may be affected by specific terms and conditions, accessible, where appropriate, in the corresponding portals. Such terms and conditions must be read and will be mandatory for users.