The Biosafety ClearingHouse of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

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The Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety
Tutorial BCH Resources
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The Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety
Welcome to this tutorial module on the Resources
section of the Biosafety Clearing-House. The
resources in this section are designed to help
you better use and understand the BCH.
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The main page of the Resources section sets out
the categories of resources available with a
brief introduction followed by a link to the
resource page to be selected. Links to these
categories of resources also appear in the
left-hand menu.
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Common formats are standard forms which provide
the format in which each category of information
is made available in the BCH. From this page, MS
Word common formats are available for download
for all categories of information.
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The common formats are offline copies of the
online registration forms and are designed to
assist BCH users to gather and organize
information prior to submission to the
Secretariat. Users with limited internet access
may also submit them, duly signed, to the
Secretariat via email.
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The common formats are divided into two
categories National Records and Reference
Records. The submission of National Records is
restricted to BCH National Focal Points and
National Authorized Users while reference records
may be submitted by all registered BCH users.
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Click on the category of record you wish to
create a record from. For example, this is what
the common format for a Competent National
Authority looks like.
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Another resource is made available from the page
named Solutions for National Participation
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All Parties have an obligation to submit to the
BCH the information enumerated under Article 20
of the Cartagena Protocol. However, many
countries are also developing their own national
BCH node where the main focus is on national
biosafety resources.
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To facilitate the interaction of national BCH
nodes with the BCH Central Portal maintained by
the Secretariat, two software applications have
been developed by the Secretariat Hermes and the
Ajax Plug-In. This page provides manuals for
both applications.
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Hermes is an online Content Management System
which provides the building blocks for a national
BCH and is interoperable with the BCH Central
Portal. Hermes based websites are hosted on the
Secretariats servers.
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The BCH Ajax Plug-In is a client side application
that can be easily integrated with any existing
website. It provides a dynamic display of
information from the BCH through
interoperability. The BCH Ajax Plug-In does not
require any specific IT knowledge, works on all
server platforms and does not require any
software installation. For further information
on these two solutions please contact the
Secretariat.
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From the link Training Site of the BCH,
registered BCH users can log on to the Training
Site with their regular email address and
password.
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The BCH Training Site is a mirror copy of the
official BCH and has been made available to help
BCH users familiarize themselves with the
functioning of the BCHs Management Center. The
information registered on the Training Site does
not affect the official BCH site and the
information that is registered in it is not made
publicly available.
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The BCH Glossary provides a list of definitions
of common terms, acronyms and expressions used
throughout the BCH Central Portal. For example
if you want to look up Living Modified Organism,
click on the letter L and scroll the page down
until you reach Living Modified Organism.
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The Thesaurus is a pre-defined list of terms and
related synonyms, or controlled vocabulary,
used in a specific context. These terms are used
to register and search for information in the BCH
databases.
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The thesaurus also defines the preferred use
term in the controlled vocabulary. A preferred
use term is one that is selected from among
synonyms and is used for indexing and retrieval
purposes in the BCH. For example, maize is the
preferred use term over corn.
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The Site Map page provides a representation of
the architecture of BCH
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On the page Downloadable files you can find a
wide variety of files to download.
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The categories of files available are as follows
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The BCH makes available ongoing online forums and
collaborative portals in order to facilitate
sharing information on and experience with Living
Modified Organisms. Archived forums are also
available here.
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Some forums and most of the collaborative portals
have limited access to specialized categories of
BCH user. If you fall into one of these
categories, and would like to have access to one
of these restricted platforms, please contact the
Secretariat.
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Interoperability refers to the sharing of data
between a countrys national BCH node and the BCH
Central Portal maintained by the Secretariat. The
documentation made available on this page
provides technical information on the BCHs
interoperability services. It includes
information on the BCH Web Service, XML Schemas
and Controlled Vocabularies. It also provides
Quick Starts in VBA, C, VB.NET, JAVA, PYTHON and
PERL and relevant articles.
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From the Mailing List page, BCH account holders
can subscribe to listservers (also known as
electronic mailing lists) that send out
information on BCH updates.
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To subscribe to a mailing list you must be a
registered BCH user. For this reason, there are
two links at the bottom of the page the first
allows BCH users who already have a BCH account
to subscribe the second is a link to sign up for
a BCH account prior to subscribing.
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The Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety
End of the tutorial onBCH Resources