Is BCCM an Official Belgian Research Infrastructure?

Updated

Yes. BCCM (the Belgian Coordinated Collections of Micro-organisms) is an official Belgian research infrastructure. Its hostname, bccm.belspo.be, sits under belspo.be, the domain of BELSPO — the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo), the federal administration that funds and coordinates scientific research programmes on behalf of the Belgian state. That domain placement is the clearest single signal that BCCM is a federally recognised, publicly anchored infrastructure rather than a private or purely academic collection.

What BCCM is

BCCM is a consortium of biological resource centres (BRCs) that preserves, characterises, and distributes micro-organisms and related biological materials for research, industry, and education. It is organised as a coordinated network rather than a single laboratory, which is why it is described as "coordinated collections" in the plural.

Because it operates under BELSPO, its role is twofold:

  • Service infrastructure — maintaining and supplying biological materials and associated data to researchers and companies.
  • Public science asset — acting as a national repository whose holdings and expertise support Belgian and international research policy.

Why the BELSPO link matters

BELSPO is a federal body, not a regional one. In the Belgian system, science policy is split between federal and regional authorities, so an infrastructure hosted under a federal office's domain carries a specific status: it is recognised at the national (federal) level. For a researcher, this matters in three practical ways:

Question What the BELSPO link tells you
Is it official? Yes — it is part of a federal science policy framework, not an informal collection.
Can I cite it as a national infrastructure? Yes — describing it as a Belgian federal biological resource infrastructure is consistent with its hosting.
Is it stable/long-term? Public anchoring under a federal office indicates institutional backing rather than a temporary project.

How to verify its official identity

If you need to confirm BCCM's status for a paper, grant application, or institutional record, check these in order:

  1. The domain itself. bccm.belspo.be resolves under belspo.be, the federal science policy office's domain. A subdomain under a government domain is a strong indicator of official hosting.
  2. The BELSPO website. Cross-check the Belspo site for references to BCCM as one of the research infrastructures it supports. Federal offices typically list the infrastructures and programmes they fund.
  3. The BCCM site's own "about" or organisational pages. These usually state the consortium structure, the participating collections, and the federal framework.
  4. Contact details. Official infrastructures publish institutional contact information and often a coordination office; use these to confirm status directly if a formal statement is required.

Citing and acknowledging BCCM

When you use BCCM materials or data, the standard practice for biological resource centres applies:

  • Cite the specific collection and strain number, not just "BCCM" — the consortium comprises several collections, and the strain's accession number identifies the material precisely.
  • Acknowledge the infrastructure where the material or service was central to the work, following your journal's or funder's acknowledgement conventions.
  • Follow the provider's stated citation format if the BCCM site or the supplying collection specifies one; BRCs often publish a preferred citation or material transfer terms.

Because citation conventions can change and may differ per collection, confirm the current preferred wording on the BCCM site or with the relevant collection before submission.

Practical takeaway

If your question is "can I treat BCCM as an official Belgian research infrastructure?" — the answer is yes, and the belspo.be domain is the evidence you can point to. For formal documents, verify the current organisational details and citation requirements directly through the BCCM and BELSPO websites, since specific collections, contacts, and citation formats are maintained there rather than in third-party summaries.