Your observation keeps your name.
Your contributor identity connects you to your observations and identifications. You control access with a passkey or passphrase. You can also add an ORCID iD to your profile.
Manage your contributor identity →Mission & promise
An open, collaborative museum of the living and mineral world.
Clio lets citizens, students, educators and researchers work side by side, with carefully documented observations that become standards-mapped, reusable science.
The promise to contributors
Your work keeps its context and its credit.
Open by intention.
Contributions are public by default, with drafts available while information is completed. Access and licensing conditions are clear at publication, subject to consent, safety, privacy and lawful moderation requirements.
Never silently deleted.
Records are intended to remain available with a reason on file for any moderation or removal decision.
A full opinion trail.
Verbatim submissions and past identifications are designed to remain alongside the current interpretation, rather than being overwritten.
Every observation is its own evidence.
A familiar species, material or celestial target is not a duplicate merely because Clio already holds many records of it. A new time, place, method, environment, behaviour or image is new evidence, and its context should remain intact.
One clear reuse licence.
Contributor-authorised Clio deposits use CC BY 4.0, so every published item has a consistent reuse rule and keeps its attribution. Third-party source rights stay attached and are never silently changed.
The promise to science
Evidence should remain inspectable.
Native vocabulary
The schema uses existing Darwin Core, Humboldt, REMBI, OME, ABCD-EFG, Audiovisual Core, FITS/WCS, IVOA provenance, EML, and related terms as its foundation.
Three visible tiers
Unverified, community-verified, and expert-verified are intended to be queryable record data with an audit trail.
Tamper-evident records
Signed records help check who submitted a version and what Clio accepted. They do not prove that an identification is correct or guarantee permanent preservation.
Referenceable first
Use a Clio permalink and version details to cite a record. DOI review is optional; Clio does not currently assign DOIs or deposit records in an external archive.
How we communicate
Mission, progress, and external relationships are kept distinct.
Clio describes each boundary plainly. We do not claim GBIF or ALA harvesting, EBI mirroring, DOI minting, external archive acceptance, institutional partnership, or academic endorsement. Curator applications and curator authority are not live; an identity, title, affiliation or ORCID iD never grants curator authority.