Making virus taxonomy accessible

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) is responsible for approving changes to the taxonomy of viruses. These changes arise from proposals made to the ICTV, usually by one of its 101 Study Groups, each of which is responsible for a particular virus family or families. The result of this international, voluntary effort is a searchable and structured list of current virus taxonomy that can be accessed on the ICTV website (www.ictv.global). The website also makes available the virus metadata resource (VMR), a spreadsheet with exemplar isolates and GenBank accession numbers for members of each species, as well as the ICTV Report which provides more detail about the taxonomy, structure and biology of each virus family. The online publication mode allows taxonomic changes and relevant research findings to be quickly reflected in the Report, and also means that the sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees, upon which taxonomic decisions often depend, are available as resources for all to use. A two-page summary of each Report chapter is published as an Open Access article by the Journal of General Virology as a Virus Taxonomy Profile. It remains a challenge to make these freely available resources comprehensive because of the pace of taxonomic change; over the last decade the number of virus families has almost doubled from 87 to 168. In meeting this challenge the ICTV will continue to rely on the enthusiasm, expertise and efforts of virologists from around the world.