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Legal & Regulatory

 
EC Implementing Decision & Statutes of MIRRI-ERIC

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-ERIC, according to the regulatory requirements of an ERIC and the legal framework of Portugal, the Statutory Seat of the Research Infrastructure.

Documents:

The second version of the MIRRI-ERIC Statutes, including Greece and Romania as official MIRRI-ERIC member and observer, respectively (18/04/2024).

The first version of the MIRRI-ERIC Statutes (13/07/2022).

The Commission Implementing Decision  (EU) 2022/1204 of 16 June 2022 setting up MIRRI-ERIC.

The first version of the MIRRI-ERIC Rules of Operation  (04/06/2024)

Access policy

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.

Partner charter and associated policies

The MIRRI-ERIC Partner Charter defines criteria for the participation of microbial domain biological resource centres (mBRCs) and institutions providing resources, services, training and expertise or participating in joint projects in MIRRI-ERIC.

Adhering to the Partner Charter MIRRI Partners agree to comply with the following policies.

MIRRI-IS data standard specifications

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).

Plasmids

Viruses

MIRRI web portal Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Terms of use

Privacy Policy

MIRRI-ERIC is fully committed to respecting people’s privacy. To ensure the application of the fundamental right to the protection of personal data, MIRRI-ERIC has adopted this basic policy of data protection, which is based on the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (EU GDPR) and applies to any website within the domain “mirri.org”, the official institutional webportal of MIRRI-ERIC.

The MIRRI-ERIC webportal is hosted at the servers of the Universitat de València (hereinafter “UV”), the institution co-hosting the Central Coordinating Unit of MIRRI-ERIC in Spain. Therefore, UV is a processor of your personal data according to the definition of the EU GDPR.

The main aim of this privacy policy is to inform the users on the way personal data are collected and precessed, providing relevant information to them, as well as fixing the accessing conditions and the use of the MIRRI-ERIC webportal regarding privacy.

You can see more information about privacy policy here 

Cookie Policy

This is the Cookie Policy for MIRRI – Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure, accessible from mirri.org

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies. This Cookies Policy was created with the help of the Cookies Policy Generator.

The Cookies We Set

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Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.

For more general information on cookies, please read “Cookies” article from the Privacy Policy Generator.

However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of our preferred contact methods:

Terms of Use

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.

Other Documents

MIRRI-ERIC Gender Equality Statement V.2

MIRRI-ERIC Gender Equality Plan V.2

MIRRI-ERIC Gender Equality Plan V1

MIRRI-ERIC Gender Equality Statement V1

MIRRI-ERIC Annual Report 2023