CGIAR Consortium: now officially ‘Open Access’ / CGIAR

"The CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Policy, supported unanimously by all 15 members of the CGIAR Consortium, is now in place.  The policy marks a ground-breaking effort to address Open Access publishing system-wide, committing CGIAR to making information products – including spatial, crop, and socio-economic and genomic datasets –Open Access (OA) over the next 5 years. CGIAR strongly believes that this clear commitment to Open Access will improve the efficiency, efficacy, and impact of its research; aid interdisciplinary research and novel computation of research literature; and allow the global public to further benefit from the wealth of CGIAR research ... To start moving this effort forward, the CGIAR Consortium is currently engaged in a Data Standards Summit.  Participants from CGIAR, FAO and other partner organizations are meeting this week to work collaboratively to develop a practical roadmap for the adoption of Open Data Management Standards. The group will discuss the Draft CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Implementation Guidelines, with a focus on consolidating current practices across CGIAR and its partners, Data Management, Data Standards; and agree on metadata standards and vocabulary that can be applied to all data domains (broadly categorized as genomic, genetic, crop / breeding, spatial and socio-economic data) ..."