Catalogus Professorum et Magistratrum Polarum

There are several important reasons for establishing a catalogue of polar researchers:

1. Biographical information on polar researchers enables a new, wide-ranging approach to the history of the development of polar research. 
2. The catalogue is one building block to make the range of disciplines in polar research visible and aware to a broader public and the science community.
3. The database is a contribution to communicating knowledge about the history of the own discipline and is therefore important for current and future polar science.
4. The catalogue is not a biographical encyclopaedia. It is therefore not about the life story in detail, but always about the reference to (the history of) polar research. 
5. The database helps to close gaps in research, namely to provide information that will enable scientific work to better recognise the contributions of women and members of indigenous peoples to the development of polar research, which have been neglected in previous historiography.

For this reason, biographical data on people who have been involved in the development of polar science since the 18th century has been thoroughly researched and presented in the entries in the necessary detail.

Scientists as well as non-academically trained persons, explorers, writers, translators - i.e. persons who have directly or indirectly contributed to the development of polar science, who have carried out scientific research or disseminated scientific findings and also those who have made research expeditions possible through their technical know-how or inventions - can be included in the catalogue with an entry.

The biographies of the scientists and other people who have contributed to the development of polar science are described in more detail in the catalogue with the help of 19 categories, also known as metadata or simply fields, in a separate entry. In addition to the basic biographical data such as name, date of birth and death or nationality of the polar researchers, the respective data record also contains detailed information

1. on their degrees/professions,
2. on their discipline(s) and their professional position(s),
3. on their connection to polar research,
4. on their curricula vitae,
5. on the works written by the scientists,
6. on the honours received by the researchers,
7. on special aspects of the lives of the individual researchers, and
8. on sources/literature related to the researchers.

In order to integrate the datasets into existing knowledge about the researchers, the datasets also contain links

1. to the GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei) and
2. to the VIAG (Virtual International Authority File).
    

Anyone interested can write a catalogue entry about a polar researcher.

The requirements for authorship are as follows:

1. The researcher about whom an entry is to be written must meet the characteristics specified in the "Who is included in the catalogue?" section.
2. The researcher about whom an entry is to be written must have been dead for at least 10 years.
3. The author of an entry agrees that representatives of the respective disciplines will check the text for accuracy and coherence (coherence of content) and, if necessary, weight it for the history of the discipline.
4. The author of an entry agrees that he/she may be mentioned by name at the end of the text.

Active scientists are expressly invited to write an entry about their own lives for research!