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This preprint should be cited as follows: Green, D.G. (1994). SINS of the Internet - the nature and organization of Special Interest Networks. E Journal ???. _________________________________________________________________ SINS OF THE INTERNET - THE NATURE AND ORGANIZATION OF SPECIAL INTEREST NETWORKS David G. Green (1) and Anthony Wesley (2) School of Environment and Information Science Charles Sturt University PO Box 789 Albury NSW 2640 AUSTRALIA Email: david.green@anu.edu.au (2) Bioinformatics Facility, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200 Email: awesley@life.anu.edu.au CONTENTS * Abstract * Introduction * Special Interest Networks + Coordination + Research * The Technological Setting + FTP + Telnet + Listserve + WAIS + Gopher + World Wide Web * Implementation + Organization + Standards + Quality control + Distributed databases + Network library + Network Publishing + Automation * Discussion * Acknowledgements * References ABSTRACT A Special Interest Network (SIN) is a set of network sites ("nodes") that collaborate to provide a complete range of information activities on a particular topic. SINS are emerging as an important new paradigm for large scale collaboration that on the Internet. Their main functions are communication, network publication, maintaining virtual libraries, and special services. Coordination is achieved through logical design, automation, mirroring, standards, and quality control. To be successful, SINs should strive to provide reliable, authorative information services, to encourage participation, and to accommodate growth. INTRODUCTION The introduction of new protocols, especially Gopher and World Wide Web, has led to an information explosion on computer networks around the globe. Driven by a rapid growth in the number of users the Internet is rapidly becoming the world's most important means of scientific information exchange. Perhaps the most significant effect of these developments is that they are beginning to change the very ways in which we carry out many activities, such as research, and teaching. Here I propose a new type of organization - the "Special Interest Network" (SIN) - as a paradigm for large scale collaboration and communication. As the volume and variety of network information grows, several trends, needs and possibilities are increasingly evident. Perhaps the greatest immediate impact of the World Wide Web is that it has makes network publishing a viable enterprise. The advantages include instant, world-wide availability, hypertext and multimedia content, and extreme flexibility in the material and format of publications. Besides traditional books and articles, for instance, we can now potentially publish data, software, images, animation and audio. There is a growing trend in many areas of research towards large scale projects and studies that involve contributions from many sources (Green, 1993a). Also, there is no need for a "publication" to be stored all in one place. For instance, acting independently many Web sites have put together national or regional guides. Many of these documents, such as the Guide to Australia integrate information from many different sources. In turn these documents are now themselves being merged to form encyclopaedic information bases, such as the Virtual Tourist. There are also great advantages in publishing raw data, as well as the conclusions of scientific studies. In many cases data that are gathered for one purpose can be recycled and, combined with other data, add value to related studies. Perhaps the most prominent example is the growth of molecular biology databases. International databases, such as Genbank (Bilofsky & Burks, 1988) and EMBL (Cameron, 1988), are public compilations consisting of contributions from thousands of scientists. Attempts are now underway to expand this practice into other areas of science, such as biodiversity (e.g. Burdet, 1992; Canhos et al., 1992; (Green, 1994; Greuter, 1991). The trends described above have made several needs increasingly obvious. These include: * Organization - Ensuring that users can obtain information easily and quickly. Indexing services, such as Archie, Veronica and Jughead, have been enormously useful, but are becoming increasingly difficult to use, and maintain, as the sheer volume of information grows. Subject indexes that point to sources of information on particular themes are becoming increasingly important in the organization of network information. * Stability - Ensuring that sources remain available and that links do not go "stale". Rather than gathering information at a single centre, an important principle is that the site that maintains a piece of information should be the principal source. Copies of (say) a dataset can become out-of-date very quickly, so it is more efficient for other sites to make links to the site that maintains a dataset, rather than take copies of it. * Quality - Ensuring that information is valid, that data are up-to-date and accurate, and that software works correctly. * Standardization - Ensuring that the form and content of information make it easy to use. SPECIAL INTEREST NETWORKS (SINS) A Special Interest Network (SIN) is a group of people and/or institutions who collaborate to provide information about a particular subject. SINS perform several important functions: * Publication - the SIN publishes information on the specialist topic. Besides articles and books in the traditional sense, publications can also include datasets, images, audio, and software. * Library - the SIN provides users with access to information on the specialist topic. Besides information stored on-site, there are links to relevant information elsewhere. * Services - the SIN might provide relevant services, such as analyzing data, to its users. * Communication - the SIN provides a means for people in the field to keep in touch. This might include mailing lists, newsgroups, newsletters, and conferences. I shall assume that all of the above activities are principally electronic and take place over a network. SINS consist of a series of participating "nodes" that each contribute to the network's functions. More specifically the nodes carry one or more of the following: * Accept and store relevant, contributed material; * Provide some form of public access for users; * Provide some unique information, or mirror other sites; * Provide organized links to other nodes; * Coordinate their activity with other nodes. FOr research activity, SINs are the modern equivalent of learned societies. Some may even be the communications medium for societies (e.g. Burdet, 1992). We can also consider SINs as a logical extension of newsgroups and bulletin boards. Namely, they aim to provide a complete working environment for their members and users. SINs differ from SIGs ("special interest groups") in two important ways. First SIGs are usually part of larger organizations. The second, and greater, distinction lies in the use of networks. Whereas a group usually has a focus, SINs are explicitly decentralized. A good example of a SIN is the European Molecular Biology Network. EMBNet is a special interest network that serves the European molecular biology and biotechnology research community. It consists of nodes operated by biologically oriented centers in different European countries. It features a number of services and activities, especially genomic databases such as EMBL (Cameron, 1988). The following features characterize most large special interest networks. They also provide guidelines for setting one up. 1. Need - The SIN serves a need that is not being met by other means, or provides a better (more comprehensive, accurate or reliable) set of data than is available from other sources. 2. Coordination - a controlling organization or syndicate manages the network, receives and processes new entries, and communicates relevant news to its users. 3. Support - There is a body of users who are willing and able to help to establish and manage the network's information activities (managing databases, editing publications, moderating newsgroups, mailing lists, etc.). 4. Participation - Anyone may contribute items to the information base. Major SINs announce new entries via special newsgroups or mailing lists. Contributors carry out all editing of their entries, including formatting, correcting and updating them. 5. Access - Anyone may access, copy or use the information at any time. Normally access is via a computing network using a standard protocol. 6. Standards (see later) - Contributors must use standard fields and attributes in submissions (e.g. Croft, 1989). These standards must be well defined and should be publicized as widely as possible. For data they are often expressed as a submission form (electronic, printed, or both) that is filled in by contributors. 7. Format - Textual data (including bibliographies, mailing lists, etc.) are normally submitted as ASCII files with embedded tags. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) provides a flexible medium for formatting information for a variety of purposes. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is an SGML application, is used for formatting documents for distribution via the World Wide Web. On any particular node databases can be stored using any database software, provided that a suitable network gateway can be provided. Utilities for SQL/HTML conversion are now widely available, for instance. Images should be in one of the common formats in use, such as GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) or JPEG (Joint Photogrwphic Experts Group). 8. Quality control (see later) - Users need some guarantee that data provided in a database are both valid and accurate (Green, 1991, 1992). Quality control checks can be applied by database contributors, coordinators, and users (see later). 9. Attribution - Every item of information should include an indication of its contributor. This is essential to the notion that contributions are a form of publication. 10. Agreements - There is an explicit list of terms and conditions. Typically, users agree to acknowledge the sources and to waive liability for any use they make of the data. Contributors agree to place their data in the public domain. The organizers agree to abide by the usual conditions for publications, such as referring corrections or changes to the contributors. Everyone agrees not to sell or charge for the data. 11. Automation - as many operations as possible (e.g. logging and acknowledging submissions) should be automated (Fig. 1). [IMAGE] Fig. 1. Stages in the publication of information on a node of a SIN. As many steps as possible should be automated. COORDINATION An information system that is distributed over several sites (nodes) requires close coordination between the sites inolved. The coordinators need to agree on the following points: 1. logical structure of the on-line information; 2. separation of function between the sites involved; 3. attribute standards for submissions (see below); 4. protocols for submission of entries, corrections, etc.; 5. quality control criteria and procedures (see below); 6. protocol for on-line searching of the databases; 7. protocols for "mirroring" the data sets. For instance, an international biodiversity database project might consist of agreements on the above points by a set or participating sites ("nodes"). Contributors could submit their entries to any nodes and each node would either "mirror" the others or else provide on-line links to them. RESEARCH Research may be viewed as a four stage process: identifying questions, gathering relevant information, analyzing and interpreting information, and disseminating results. SINs have the potential to assist researchers at each of these stages: 1. In the first stage, communication enables researchers to stay in constant touch with each other, and with relevant user communities. The benefits include the ability to relay questions and issues to researchers essentially in real time; to increase the likelihood of relevant research questions being addressed in a timely manner and to minimize unnecessary duplication of research. 2. In the information gathering stage, not only can researchers more effectively reach sources of relevant information, but also contribute to repositories of raw data. 3. In the analysis stage, researchers may be able to access relevant software, search bibliographies, or seek advice from colleagues. 4. In the dissemination phase, researchers will be able to publish their papers (or abstracts and reprints) to a very wide audience very quickly. These practices are already widespread in many fields (e.g. physics) and several network-based journals already exist on Internet (e.g. "Complexity International"). THE TECHNOLOGICAL SETTING Most parts of the world are now linked by the Internet (Krol, 1992), which is a computing "network of networks" that links together over 2 million computers around the world. A few of the services currently available include: Gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web, FTP, Usenet News, Telnet, Hytelnet (a bibliographic protocol for libraries, a library SIN), X.500 and network resource location services, such as Archie, Veronica and Jughead, for searching the network. For details of available services, see for example, The Biologist's Guide to the Internet. FTP Until recently "File Transfer Protocol" (FTP) was perhaps the most popular method of providing information over the Internet. Under "anonymous FTP" users log in to a host site across the network (using the name "anonymous" and giving their email address as a "password"). They are then free to retrieve any files from the host's public directories of information. Telnet Many sites provide services to "guest" users via the telnet protocol. Under telnet, users log in to a host site using a publicized guest account. This account allows them to use services that the host makes available to the public, such as querying a database or running certain programs (e.g. public gopher or web clients). Listserve Listervers provide public mailing lists. Subscribers join a list by mailing a subscription "subscribe list_name user_name" (with the appropriate names inserted, e.g. subscribe biodiv-l Fred Nurk) to the server listserv@host_name (e.g. listserv@ftpt.br). The listserver program adds their name to the mailing list. Subscribers can communicate with everyone on the list by sending messages to the address list_name@host_name (e.g. biodiv- l@ftpt.br), which is then broadcast to all members of the list. WAIS WAIS ("Wide Area Information Servers") is a client-server protocol to search for and retrieve files, based on full-text indexing of their contents or titles. A common application is a "waisindex", which is often available via gopher or web servers. Gopher Gopher is a client-server protocol for retrieving multimedia information automatically via a system of menus. Developed at the University of Minnesota, Gopher revolutionized environmental information by enabling computer-non-literates to access network information such as FTP and WAIS (including images and sounds) without having to know about the usual process. It now has literally millions of users world-wide. The key factors in the success of Gopher are its simplicity - just point and click on a menu - and the availability of "client" software for all of the most commonly used computing platforms. Previously, using the Internet had required a fair measure of computer literacy. Gopher made it possible for many people to explore "The Net" for the first time. Furthermore, gopher server sites are very easy to set up and maintain; basically ascii files are formatted and placed in a gopher file system. However more sophisticated implementations involving such things as gateways to SQL databases are also possible. World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW) originated at CERN in Switzerland. Like Gopher, it operates on a client-server basis. The underlying protocol is the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Like Gopher, WWW supports multimedia transactions. But rather than menus, "The Web" deals primarily with hypertext documents. These documents are formatted using the "Hypertext Markup Language" (HTML) which allows limited text layout and formatting, and the inclusion of hypertext links. These links are presented in the form of selectable highlighted terms or images embedded directly within the text that lead to other documents, images, etc., which may themselves contain embedded hyptertext links. Selecting one of these links tells the software to retrieve the selected item for display, from wherever in the world it is stored. The items may be documents, images, audio, or even animation. WWW's hypertext formatting language (HTML) is an application of SGML (see earlier). The freeware program RTFtoHTML converts Rich Text Format (an output option on many wordprocessors) to HTML and macros for converting text to HTML are available for MS Word. The HTML browser tkWWW (freeware for Unix/X11) includes a WYSIWYG editor for HTML. During 1993 World Wide Web (WWW) began to have a profound effect on the academic community. Like Gopher, participation on the "Web" is growing exponentially (doubling time is at present 3 months). The stimulus of the explosion was NCSA's release of a new program (Mosaic) that realized the full potnential of WWW's hypermedia capability. NCSA Mosaic is now available under X-Windows, Macintosh and DOS-Windows systems. Important features of Mosaic include: * it permits browsing of ALL of the main network protocols (FTP, WAIS, Gopher, telnet, etc.); * it permits both text formatting and images that are embedded directly within text, so providing the capability of a true "electronic book"; * it integrates freely available third party display tools for image data, sound, Postscript, animation, etc. * it permits seamless integration of a user's own local data (without the need of a server) with information from servers anywhere on the Web; * its forms interface allows users to interact with documents that appear as forms (including buttons, menus, dialog boxes) which can pass complex queries back to the server. * its map interface allows users to query a map interactively. This would allow (say) a user to get information about different countries just by clicking on a world map, in GIS-like fashion. * its authorization feature provides various security features, such as restricting access to particular information, passwords etc. * its SQL gateway allows servers to pass queries to databases. Such gateways are already implemented for many databases (e.g. Australian plants, DNA sequences). * its ability to run scripts or programs on the server and to deliver the results to WWW. * its ability to include files dynamically and thus build up and deliver documents "on the fly". IMPLEMENTATION ORGANIZATION Although SINS could (and no doubt will) be organized in many different ways. Using the example of running a public database, the scheme outlined below recommends mechanisms that are designed to distribute the workload, encourage participation and to accommodate growth: * One node acts as a secretariat for the network. * Each node serves some special function, such as acting as coordinating centre for one or more SIN projects, or acting as a regional centre. * Each node mirrors a set of basic documents and/or menus that define the basic services offered by the SIN. * Maintenance of each project and/or document is supervised by a coordinating centre (not necessarily the same for every activity). * Material for publication may be submitted to any node (or perhaps to some subset). * The coordinating centre for a given project regularly harvests incoming items from other nodes, carries out quality control procedures, and prepares updates. * Each node carries out a mirroring operation regularly (say once per day) to retrieve up-to-date, local copies of updates and other new information from coordinating centres. Many of the above steps will be automated. "Mirroring" is the process of duplicate of a set of information that originates from another site. Whereas it is generally better to provide a pointer to the site that maintains an item of information, it is desirable to mirror any information (e.g. a "home" page for the SIN) that is frequently used, especially to reduce international traffic. Mirroring is also desirable in case of disk crashes or breaks in entwork connections. STANDARDS Coordinating and exchanging scientific information are possible only if different data sets are compatible with one another. To be reusable, data must conform to standards. The need for widely recognized data standards and data formats is therefore growing rapidly. Given the increasing importance of network communications (Green, 1993a, 1993bb) new standards should be compatible with network protocols. To be reusable, data must conform to standards. Standards play a crucial role in coordinating activity. We need to develop two main kinds. 1. Attribute standards define what information to collect. Some information (e.g. who, when, where and how) is essential for every data set; other information (e.g. soil pH) may be desirable but not essential. 2. Quality control standards provide indicators of validity, accuracy, reliability or methodology for data fields and entries (see below). Examples include indicators of precision for (say) spatial location, references to glossaries or authorities used for names, and codes to indicate the kinds of error checks that have been performed on the entry. 3. Interchange standards specify how information should be laid out for distribution. QUALITY CONTROL Users need assurance that data is correct, that software works, and that articles contain valid information. Because anyone can open a network site and release anything they like, quality is not assured. Users therefore tend to refer to sites that offer some form of authorization or guarantee of quality. For this reason users usually prefer sites that are well-managed, well-organized, or belong to major institutions. The two main issues are whether the methods used are sound, especially species identifications, and whether errors have occurred in recording the data. To ensure validity, molecular biology PDDs use the simple, but effective criterion of publication in a refereed journal. In the case of biodiversity information, however, this restriction would rule out vast quantities of useful information that is collected by government agencies, business companies, and public interest groups. Many different approaches can be used. For example one might insist that a description of methodology accompany each data set that has not been published in the scientific literature. Alternatively, the PDD might accept all contributions and categorize them on the basis of the evident quality of information. These categories would be based on methodological grounds, such as whether or not vouchered specimens were collected and checked. Whatever criterion is used it is desirable to include indicators of reliability for the information in the attribute standard. Ideally every item of information should include a tag denoting accuracy or validity. For instance, is location given to the nearest minute of Latitude? or degree? and how was it derived? By reference to a map? a global positioning system? or interpolated much later from a site description? Quality control fields need to include information about what error checks have been applied to ensure that the values have been recorded and entered correctly. For example, contributors should indicate whether they have checked entries by, say, comparing them against field notes or specimen labels. The compiling agent can apply consistency and outlier checks to filter out errors that may have been missed earlier (Green 1991, 1992). If the data incorporate sufficient redundancy, then consistency checks can reveal many errors. Does the named species exist? For instance, does the location given for a field site lie on land? and within the country indicated? If the database maintains suitable background information, then outlier tests can reveal suspect records that need to be rechecked. For instance if a record indicates that a plant grows at a site that has significantly lower rainfall than any other for that species, then the record needs to be checked in case of error. Both sorts of checks can be automated and are now routine for census data. They have recently been applied to herbarium records and other environmental data (Chapman, 1992; Chapman & Busby, in press). In a PDD quality control is everyone's responsibility. Far from lacking peer review, a PDD can subject contributions to far more rigorous and exacting tests than most data sets ever receive. When a contribution is received the PDD compiler should apply tests to ensure that the data set conforms to the standard and for any obvious errors. If any faults are detected, the data set is returned to the source for correction. After this initial checking, new data sets are placed in the updates area (Fig. 1) and users are invited to submit comments about them. After suitable checks, and corrections by the contributor, the new entry is transferred to the database proper. DISTRIBUTED DATABASES An important activity of a SIN is for many sites to contribute to build a joint database that is searchable across the network. A network database can have four different levels of distribution: * Centralized - the entire database resides on a single server; other sites point to it. This is the most common form of network database. * Distributed data, separate indices at each site - The database consists of several component databases, each maintained at different sites. A common interface (e.g. a WWW document) provides pointers to the components, which are queried separately. This form of loose integration is common using Gopher, WAIS and WWW. * Distributed data, single centralized index - The data consists of many items, which are stored at different sites but accessed via a database of pointers maintained at a single site. Several forms of network indexing, such as Veronica, Jughead, WAIS, and several WWW harvesters support this form of integration. * Distributed data, multiple queries - many component databases are queried simultaneously across the network from a single interface. At present no common protocol publicly available supports such a flexible form of database integration, but it is possible to use proprietary software from a single supplier. NETWORK LIBRARY An important function of the biodiversity special interest network will be to act as a biodiversity "library". That is, it should provide organized links to relevant information, wherever this information resides on the Internet. The logical design of the system could be based around major projects & themes and the library can be compiled and maintained in several ways: * Members can submit "hotlists" of thematic pointers to a coordinating centre for editing; * An automatic registration service (e.g. via email or as a WWW form) can be available for people to submit relevant links information, which is then processed by scripts on a network server. The above information could be made available via a series of menus and pages available on the Internet via Gopher, World Wide Web and other suitable protocols. Copies of the main pages and hierarchy of documents could be available at each node in the BIN21 network. This will require a regular "mirroring" process to ensure that all nodes are kept up to date. It is very important to ensure that all information items in this library are visible at all nodes and not just visible as an isolated reference at a particular site. NETWORK PUBLISHING Network publications can range from familiar paper items - books, journals, news magazines - that are simply transferred to electronic form to novel productions, such as image databases or thematic compilations of pointers to items stored at many different sites. An important principle in network publication is that the site that maintains an item of information publishes the information. This rule applies esecially to items that are updated regularly. Secondary sources (other sites that want to provide their users with access to the item concerned) should adopt one of two options: either provide a link to the primary site, or else mirror the original by downloading copies at regular intervals. These practices ensure that users always have access to the most up-to-date information available. One approach to publishing that a SIN can adopt is simply to register relevant existing activities. This benefits both the SIN as a whole and the publishing site: * individual sites can gain an international "stamp of approval", and world-wide collaboration, for particular projects by having them recognized by the SIN; * a SIN can incorporate many different projects, each supervised by a separate node, and no single agency needs to bear the full burden for any particular project. * a SIN or site can continue to focus on its own particular area of specialization or expertize and still provide access to information held at other sites. AUTOMATION Automation is a key element in making SINs viable. The aim is to reduce the workload and human involvement in creating and maintaining information, and hence costs, for participating nodes. For example, publishing submitted material (whether text, data, images etc) involves several steps (Fig. 1). As many as possible of these steps should be automated. For instance, storing, registering and acknowledging incoming material are routine procedures that are time-consuming if done "by hand". Once the necessary scripts and programs have been developed, they could be provided with other standard files as astartup package to new nodes. In many cases the scripts and programs needed to automate particular procedures already exist and are freely available on the Internet. DISCUSSION The notion of SINS as described here derives from three sources. First, as manager of a network information server I was prompted to develop the idea after observing the ways in which various sites had begun to coordinate their activities on particular topics. It seemed to me that SINS have the potential to fill both the role of learned societies as authoritative bodies, and of libraries as stable repositories of knowledge and information. Second, the evident success of molecular biology databases and physics preprint services suggests that the underlying principles can be extended both to other fields and to other areas of activity. Across the entire range of science, for instance, observations and experiments yield a wealth of raw data which, if suitably organized, can add value to future studies. Finally there is the problem of how to organize an exploding pool of information on the network. Librarians have struggled with this problem for centuries. Whilst their solutions are useful, the information explosion on the network poses problems never encountered before: the sheer volume of information, rapid turnover and change (especially the need to maintain information), and the flexibility of hypertext and multimedia. The SINS approach provides a user-driven solution, in which groups of people interested in a particular topic organize and index information in ways that they find most useful. Various projects are putting into practice the SINS concept, as outlined here. For example, FireNet, for example, is a SIN concerned with all aspects of landscape fires (Green et al., 1994) and the Biodiversity Information Network (BIN21) has now organized its network activity as a SIN (Green and Croft, 1994). These and other similar activities have provided many useful lessons about putting the SINS idea in practice. I have tried to incorporate some of this practical experience into the above account. The interest shown in such groups encourages my belief that the SINS approach is a very fruitful way to organize activity via the Internet. To put current developments into perspective, we can consider the changes that have taken place in the way that scientific results are disseminated. We might term the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century was the era of correspondence between great scholars. The Nineteenth Century can be classed as the era of the great societies and the Twentieth as the era of the great journals. The Twenty-First Century will surely become the era of the knowledge web and I expect that SINS, whatever form they may take, will play a major role in its organization. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the Australian Research Council. REFERENCES * Bilofsky, H. S. & Burks, C. (1988). The GenBank genetic sequence data bank. Nucl. Acids Res. 16: 1861-1863. * Burdet, H. M. (1992). What is IOPI? Taxon 41: 390-392. * Cameron, G. N. (1988). The EMBL data library. Nucl. Acids Res. 16: 1865-1867. * Canhos, V., Lange, D., Kirsop, B.E., Nandi, S., Ross, E. (Eds). (1992). Needs and Specifications for a Biodiversity Information Network. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi. * Croft, J.R. (1989). Herbarium information standards and protocols for interchange of data. Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra. * Goldfarb, C. (1990). The SGML Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Green, D.G. (1993a). Databasing the world. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 9, 12-17. * Green, D.G. (1993b). Hypermedia and palaeoenvironmental research. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 10, 11-14. * Green, D.G. (1994). Databasing diversity - a distributed, public-domain approach. Taxon, 42, xxx-xxx. * Green, D.G. and Croft, J.R. (1994). Proposal for Implementing a Biodiversity Information Network. In Linking Mechanisms for Biodiversity Information. Proceedings of a Workshop for the Biodiversity Information Network, Base de Dados Tropical, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brasil. * Green, D.G., Gill, A.M. and Trevitt, A.C.F. (1994). FireNet - an international network for landscape fire information. Wildfire - Quarterly Bulletin of the International Association of Wildland Fire xx, xxx-xxx. * Greuter, W. (1991). Draft lists of names in current use: first management progress report. Taxon 40: 521-524. * Krol, E. (1992). The Whole Internet Guide and Catalog. O'Reilly and Associates. * Smith, J. & Stutely, R. (1988). SGML: the Users' Guide to ISO 8879. New York/Chichester/Brisbane/Toronto: Ellis Horwood Limited/Halstead Press.