• regular symposia will provide space for intensive working, coming into contact, for discussing and for the setting of new milestones for the future.

• A mailing-list serves the continuos exchange of information between the network members and will be a forum for all phenotyping related topics. Scientists from all involved research areas will provide and get a quick response to questions. 

• A database guarantees easy access to methodical data and a standardised presentation of the data. 

• The network will provide an electronic method form that will make it possible to present detailed data in a standardised way. 

• The network members will be involved in the development of the form. 

• The detailed descriptions will include test-methods, housing- conditions, animal- and apparatus specifications. 

• The completed form and the corresponding reference will be integrated into the database .

As local organisers of the Symposium “Behavioural Phenotyping of Mouse Mutants”, February 17-19, 2000 in Cologne, Germany we realised a great interest in the behavioural phenotyping of mouse mutants and in the optimisation and standardisation of test methods. 

During the Symposium it became obvious that it is necessary to find an interdisciplinary consensus for the phenotyping of mouse mutants. 

A consensus does not mean that all scientist have to use identical test conditions it means, that they have to consent to the fact that a consideration of all the parameters that might affect`the performance of the animals within a test is necessary.

The establishment of a consensus is a fluent process which makes a continuos exchange of knowledge necessary. 

A non-profit internet-based network is an ideal instrument to make this exchange of knowledge possible.

Many of the published data on methods applied in studies on the behavioural phenotyping of mouse mutants are incomplete. They do not provide all the information necessary to reproduce a test setting and to compare published data. It is necessary to make the existing data transparent.