The Encyclopedia of Life is growing thanks to contributions of content from individuals and organizations throughout the world. If you're an enthusiastic amateur, professional scientist, scholarly organization or simply someone who wants to help EOL grow, there are many ways for you to get involved today.
Contribute Images, Videos and Sounds to EOL through a third-party website
Contributing Directly to EOL
If you are an individual and you'd like to provide information directly to EOL, please register to become a member. Becoming a member is free and takes only a few minutes. If you maintain a website or database project and have a large amount of information, including photos, video and sounds, that you would like to share with EOL, please consider becoming an EOL Content Partner.
The easiest and fastest way to contribute to EOL is to leave a comment on the site. You can ask questions, make requests, participate in discussions, and share your expertise and interests with the EOL community anywhere you see a comment box. And when you leave a comment, EOL adds the content you commented on to your personal Watch List, which you can access from your profile. Here you can follow activity such as conversations on that content.
Throughout EOL you can rate different pictures, articles and other content with from one to five stars, with five stars being the very best. Your ratings help the entire EOL community to focus on the very best content we have to offer.
Anyone can contribute text articles to EOL, subject to review and approval by a member of the EOL Curator community. To add an article directly to EOL, select the Detail tab on any EOL taxon page and look for the button at the top of the page marked “add an article to this page”. When you click on this button you will be given the opportunity to write an article on one of a large number of topics. If you are contributing content that is derived from another source, please take care to read EOL’s Licensing Policy for Content Providers and be mindful of whether or not your use of that content is permissible. Also, always make sure to cite your sources, and if you copy something verbatim make sure to give credit to the author(s).
Another great way to contribute to EOL is to create and annotate an EOL Collection or become part of an EOL Community. Click on the Community tab on any EOL taxon page to discover Collections and Communities associated with that taxon and start exploring!
And if you’re an enthusiastic amateur, professional scientist, or other expert, please consider becoming an EOL Curator and contribute your expertise to make EOL as high quality a resource as possible. Learn more about how to apply to be an EOL Curator today.
Contributing Images, Video and Sound to EOL
If you are contributing information to one of EOL's many Content Partners, you are already an EOL contributor. For many individuals, this is the fastest and easiest way to ensure your articles, photos and other content become part of EOL. Please review the list of EOL Content Partners.
You can contribute images to EOL through many platforms, including iNaturalist and Flickr:
iNaturalist
You can contribute images to EOL through the popular nature observation site iNaturalist. If you upload your images as iNaturalist observations, they will be exported to EOL if the following conditions are met:
- Your observations is confirmed at the Research Grade level by the iNaturalist community.
- Your image is released under a creative commons license that is compatible with the EOL licensing policy.
Because iNaturalist observations have undergone community review, photos from iNaturalist are considered TRUSTED information on EOL.
Flickr
EOL also maintains a very active group on the popular photo sharing site Flickr. Flickr images are harvested by EOL if the following conditions are met:
- Your image is posted to the EOL Group page on Flickr.
- Your image is released under a creative commons license that is compatible with the EOL licensing policy.
- Your image has properly formed taxonomic machine tags.
- View the Flickr tutorial
Flickr images are considered UNREVIEWED information on EOL until they are promoted to TRUSTED status by an EOL curator.
You can contribute videos to EOL through Vimeo and YouTube:
EOL maintains a group on Vimeo, which is especially helpful for contributors with video longer than 30 seconds. Instructions for using Vimeo to add videos to EOL are in the group forum.
There is also an EOL channel on YouTube. If you post videos to YouTube, you can share them with us simply by tagging and licensing them appropriately; check out our instructions for this.
YouTube and Vimeo videos are considered UNREVIEWED information on EOL until they are promoted to TRUSTED status by an EOL curator.
Do you enjoy recording bird or insect songs or other wildlife audio? We have a group on SoundCloud where you can share digital audio recordings with us.
