Skip to content

Odyssey training lesson

Authors

Lesson overview

Description
This lesson introduces the Odyssey framework, an R Shiny application that supports interactive exploration of biodiversity data. Through hands-on examples, learners will use Odyssey to investigate molecular biodiversity records alongside geographic metadata and gain experience with practical data discovery workflows for biodiversity research and data management.

Prerequisites
To be able to follow this course, learners should have knowledge in:
 1. Basic familiarity with R and RStudio

Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, learners will be able to:
 1. Use the Odyssey interface to explore biodiversity datasets
 2. Inspect and assess geographic and molecular metadata consistency

Target Audience: Researchers, undergraduate students, postgraduate students, citizens scientists, stakeholders, and more.

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Schedule: This self-paced and self-directed learning module lets you advance at your convenience. Before starting, please install the necessary software. Once set up, feel free to practice with the use cases at your own pace.

Duration: Excluding the initial setup phase, the course content is designed for completion in under an hour.

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Funding: This work was supported by ELIXIR, the research infrastructure for life science data (through the 2024-SCIENCE-BFSP commissioned services project).

Contributors

Greek Mythology icons made by max.icons from www.flaticon.com

Citing this lesson

Please cite as:

  1. Anastasia (Natasa) Anastasiadou, Nikos Pechlivanis, Fotis Psomopoulos, et al.. (2026) ELIXIR-BFSP-Odyssey-Lesson. Github. https://github.com/BiodataAnalysisGroup/ELIXIR-BFSP-Odyssey-Lesson.
  2. Geert van Geest, Elin Kronander, Jose Alejandro Romero Herrera, Nadja Žlender, & Alexia Cardona. (2023). The ELIXIR Training Lesson Template - Developing Training Together (v1.0.0-alpha). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7913092.

Setup

Data setup

No prior data download is required for this lesson. The application is designed to automatically query and retrieve the necessary data directly during runtime. Please just ensure you have an active internet connection to allow the application to fetch the data successfully.

Software setup

To follow this lesson, learners need a working R environment and RStudio.

Required software:

  • R (version 4.5 or newer, 4.6 recommended): Download and installation instructions are available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN): https://cran.r-project.org/

  • RStudio RStudio provides an integrated development environment for R and is strongly recommended for this lesson: https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/