All WoRMS content is open-access and available at no charge!
The maintenance and development of WoRMS relies on financial contributions, the time contributed by its editorial board and the support of its host institution VLIZ.
What can you do to help maintain and update WoRMS?
Provide feedback
The strength and impact of the WoRMS user community cannot be underestimated: users detect omissions accidentally overlooked by the editors and they come across possible errors or duplicate entries. All these omissions and possible errors can be sent to the Data Management Team. The DMT acts as a buffer between the many users and editors, to avoid our editors being overloaded by questions and remarks that sometimes can easily be solved or fixed by the DMT. Questions that do need expert input will be forwarded to the relevant expert(s), who will either correct or add information to WoRMS or provide appropriate feedback to the users.
So if you come across missing taxa, possible duplicates or inconsistencies, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us!
Support WoRMS through the VLIZ philanthropy programme
WoRMS aims to capture the names of all species described since the pioneering work of Carl Linnaeus and is continuously updated and improved by a group of taxonomic experts ("the editors").
Completing and correcting WoRMS requires an enormous continuing effort and is entirely dependent on the expertise and time of the editors. On top of that, it is a race against time as species are at risk of disappearing due to changing maritime conditions (such as warming, pollution and acidification), before they are discovered.
VLIZ, through its philanthropy programme, is supporting marine projects locally and worldwide in order to pursue its mission: sustainable management of the ocean resources and passing them on to future generations. Your gift will be used to support the work of WoRMS editors: including filling gaps in coverage, participation in international workshops and meetings, expanding the content and enhancing the quality of taxonomic databases, engaging personnel for verification of taxonomic information, and purchase of scientific literature.
Please consider sponsoring our taxonomic and thematic experts, especially if you have specific requests or needs, or have a local species list that needs validation.
For more information, please visit Support the WoRMS editors and consider to a donation.
Support WoRMS through its contributing databases
WoRMS is partly composed of a series of externally hosted and managed species databases, such as e.g. AlgaeBase and FishBase.
WoRMS encourages sponsorship of these databases, as these contributions also benefit WoRMS and its user community.
Support WoRMS via project funding
Please consider partnering with WoRMS in projects that require access services to taxonomic information, IT tool and/or as a means to network with the marine taxonomic expert community.
For more information on this, please contact the Data Management Team
