Data standards; making CGIAR data available and accessible / CGIAR

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-01-04

Summary:

"Sharing research data and making it widely available is commonly recognized as a way to support a sustainable increase in food security in both developed and developing countries.  In fact, the 2012 commitments of the G8 leaders included an agreement to 'share relevant agricultural data … and … to develop options for the establishment of a global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems.'  Now that CGIAR is officially 'Open Access' and is focusing its attention on implementation, what does ‘open data’ mean for CGIAR? The concept of ‘open’ isn’t in itself new to CGIAR; it has long been our basic philosophy to make our research results publicly available.  But publicly available doesn’t necessarily mean publicly accessible, and it is now critical for CGIAR to not only to commit to making data available, but to pay more attention to the way in which that data (and related information) is released. The Open Knowledge Foundation defines Open Data as: '…data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike.' Living by such Open Data principles will be vital if we are to achieve CGIAR’s long-term data management objectives. There are already many examples of Open Data initiatives across CGIAR, such as those showcased earlier this year at the G-8 Conference on Open Data for Agriculture, and, with the adoption of the CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Policy, the CGIAR Consortium now has the institutional mechanisms necessary to tackle the issue from a system-wide perspective. In order to enhance the visibility, accessibility and impact of research and development activities broad consensus is required on how to ensure data is stored and described appropriately so that it is discoverable and interoperable with CGIAR and partner data repositories.  Interoperability requires good metadata, appropriate data protocols and the use of standard formats to allow content not only to be discovered, but also shared and incorporated across different technology platforms.  Agreement on data standards is urgently required ..."

Link:

http://www.cgiar.org/consortium-news/data-standards-making-cgiar-data-available-and-accessible-2/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.data oa.comment oa.mandates oa.best_practices oa.events oa.agriculture oa.reports oa.food_security oa.cgiar oa.policies

Date tagged:

01/04/2014, 15:22

Date published:

01/04/2014, 10:22