international information systems for agricultural science and

Discussion Draft: 28/11/05

EXPERT CONSULTATION

International Information Systems

for Agricultural Science and Technology –

Review of Progress and Prospects

Rome October 2005

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CONTENTS ACRONYMS .............................................................................................. 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................... 4 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 5

1.1 Background.................................................................................. 5 1.2 Process........................................................................................ 5 1.3 Introductory plenary presentations .................................................. 5

2. GOAL AND OUTCOMES.......................................................................... 8 3. GENERAL FINDINGS ............................................................................. 8 4. ACTION AREAS .................................................................................. 10

4.1 Advocacy ................................................................................... 10 4.2 Capacity building ........................................................................ 11 4.3 Content management .................................................................. 13

5. PARTNERSHIP.................................................................................... 16

5.1 Analysis of existing partnerships ................................................... 17 5.2 Motivation.................................................................................. 18 5.3 Mechanisms for collaboration at international level........................... 18

Annex 1 - Background Documents and other Materials Distributed ................. 20 Annex 2 - List of Participants .................................................................... 21 Annex 3 - Agenda and Schedule................................................................ 25

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ACRONYMS AARINENA Association of Agricultural Research Institutions in the Near East and North Africa AGORA Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture AGRIS International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology AGMES Agricultural Metadata Element Set AGNIC Agriculture Network Information Centre AGROVOC Multilingual Agricultural Thesaurus AIMS Agricultural Information Management Standards AJOL African Journals Online AOS Agricultural Ontology Service ARD Agricultural Research for Development ASARECA Association for Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa CABI CAB International CARDI Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CIRAD Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le

développementCLAES Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems CTA Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation DFID Department for International Development, UK FARA Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa FORAGRO Foro de las Américas para la Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico AgropecuarioGFAR Global Forum on Agricultural Research GlobAL.RAIS GLOBal Alliance of the Regional Agricultural Information Systems GPP Global Partnership Programme IAALD International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists IAC International Agricultural Centre ICM Information and Communication Management ICT Information and Communication Technology IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute IICA Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture IM Information Managements IMARK Information Management Resource Kit INASP International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications IT Information Technology ITO ITrain Online ITOCA Information Training and Outreach Center for Africa NAL National Agricultural Library NARIMS National Agricultural Research Information Management System Project NARS National Agricultural Research System OAI Open Access Initiative PERI Programme for Enhancement of Research Information RAIN Regional Agricultural Information Network RDF Resource Description Framework RSS RDF Site Summary WAICENT World Agricultural Information Centre ZADI Zentralstelle für Agrardokumentation und -information (Agricultural Information

and Documentation Centre)

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY [To be added once the main report is finalized...]

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background The Expert Consultation brought together key stakeholders in at least two separate initiatives to address the goal of developing coherence in international information systems for agricultural science and technology. This goal is set in the context of increasing inequity in access to agricultural information, and the emergence and adoption of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) which are reducing costs and catalyzing a migration of content to digital formats. Firstly, the Consultation formed part of a series of meetings from 2000 onwards in the context of “Coherence in agricultural information”, which comprised representatives from key organizations providing information services in the field of agriculture, natural resources and rural development. Secondly, the Consultation built on the findings of a series of regional and inter-regional meetings in 2003/04 within the framework of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) “Global.RAIS” project. These meetings were attended by representatives of national agricultural research systems and their regional fora/associations. The following objectives were formulated before the consultation in relation to the outcomes of previous meetings. • Institutional networks. To define for the wider agricultural information community

the future roles of and relationships between the various stakeholder networks and initiatives in agricultural science and technology.

• Open access publishing for agriculture. To raise awareness of the present “business models” for self-publishing by agricultural institutions and possible new approaches offered by the Open Access model.

• Capacity building. To define for the wider agricultural information community the future roles of and relationships between the various capacity building initiatives in agricultural information management.

• Data exchange standards. To initiate and/or consolidate a range of focused working groups for the development and validation of standards and guidelines for information exchange.

1.2 Process The Consultation opened with a series of keynote presentations and general discussion. Participants then divided into two groups, whereby Track 1 addressed institutional issues in “Networks, Capacity Building and Governance”, and Track 2 addressed technical issues in “Standards, Technologies and Protocols”. Each track had working sessions comprising presentations, working groups, and plenary discussions, and the topics considered were: Institutional Networks, Capacity Building, Open Access Publishing, Data Standards, and Alliances. Participants from the two tracks then reconvened to report on and discuss the findings of the working groups and to agree on collaborative actions. 1.3 Introductory plenary presentations Anton Mangstl welcomed participants to FAO, and framed the meeting around the need to take stock of experiences to date and to movie forward on new initiatives in science and technology information. He noted that a principal challenge facing agricultural organizations involved in science and technology is that although their core competencies are in research and development, there is an imperative to be effective in accessing information and disseminating their outputs. Many opportunities are provided by the new information technologies, but many agricultural organizations are not rising to the challenge adequately. The key constraints that FAO has observed are firstly institutional

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capacities in the lack of resources and appropriate organizational structures, secondly human capacities in the lack of awareness and skills, and lastly in the networks that offer poor outreach to key audiences. Enhancing institutional capacities will require new organizational structures, new skills and/or new staff, new information content in digital format, and the acquisition of new technologies. Minimising the impact of this change would require that stakeholders learn lessons from others and as far as possible use existing technologies. The Opening Session then continued with keynote presentations by representatives from the five sponsoring organizations. Stephen Rudgard from FAO provided a reprise of the International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology (AGRIS) initiative and network, established in 1975 and now at its 30th anniversary, that retained the principal objective of improving access and exchange of information on agricultural science and technology. Following the perceived need to re-evaluate AGRIS, a new vision and strategy developed in 2002 with the principles: a decentralized approach; a greater diversity of participating organizations; a strengthened role in capacity building; a focus on full text documents; greater availability of associated information about activities/organizations/people; and a set of web-enabled standards and tools. An electronic conference across the AGRIS network in 2003 had led to a set of 15 recommendations which had been implemented during 2004/05. Strategic partnerships had been developed at international levels, and the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) had been developed to address the capacity building requirements. In the area of methodologies and tools, FAO had facilitated the development of the Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AGMES), the AGRIS document Application Profile, the multilingual AGROVOC thesaurus, and the WebAGRIS tools. The key challenges in the AGRIS network remained (i) decentralization, with establishment of national networks based on enabled institutions and sound policies; (ii) capacity building, to support the decentralization; (iii) standards and tools for content management, with wider adoption and use of common approaches; (iv) partnership enhanced at international level. A summary was also provided on the initiative for “Access to Global Online Research on Agriculture” (AGORA), in which many organizations in the eligible countries face the continuing problem of costly and unreliable Internet access, which restricts their ability to use the rich array of content available from almost 800 journals offered by commercial publishers. The Consultative Group (on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) speaker, Enrica Porcari, spoke about the system-wide “ICT-KM” initiative, with the objective of creating “a CGIAR without boundaries, an internationally distributed, unified and open-knowledge organization”. CGIAR staff around the world collaborate on their research using high-capacity computing and communication, and the global public goods created and managed by the CGIAR are safeguarded and made accessible to all stakeholders. The five key areas of the strategy are (i) connectivity, (ii) content, (iii) structure, (iv) coordinating actions and (v) work culture. Early priorities for implementation focused largely on strengthening “infrastructure”. The 14 projects implemented in 2004/05 had also concentrated on system-wide activities within the CGIAR’s 15 Centers aimed at introducing changes in work culture, monitoring and evaluation, use of standards and metadata, and financial savings. The 2006/07 plan would focus largely on science and research content and knowledge sharing and the inclusion of partners, and an online consultation would be used to arrive at a consolidated view of information sources and the need for improved search facilities. There would be linkage opportunities with non-CGIAR partners in: metadata/standards for textual information; data exchange standards; subject vocabularies; capacity building and training; and development of institutional networks. The ICT-KM slogan is “collaborate, create, and communicate”. Ola Smith from GFAR outlined the activities and meetings in 2003-5 focused on information and communication management for agricultural research and development (ICM4ARD). The establishment of a “Global Agenda for Information and Communications Management for Agriculture Research and Development” had been agreed at the GFAR

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Triennial Meeting in Dakar, out of which had arisen the “GlobAL.RAIS” project conceived as a set of consultations leading to the creation of a vision for a global ARD information system Separate regional consultations culminated in the 1st Inter-Regional Consultation held in June 2004, out of which arose a ICM4ARD Global Partnership Programme (GPP) to support regional and national ARD organizations. The outputs of the GPP were to be (i) strengthening of the advocacy role of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) leaders, (ii) capacity development of regional and national ICM specialists, and (iii) greater integration of ARD information systems, and (iv) development of appropriate governance structures for global and regional information Systems. A 2nd Inter-Regional Consultation held in May 2005 recommended the establishment of common data standards and formats, the organization of a consultation on the methodology and tools for capacity building and a strategy for action for capacity development for period 2005-2007, and the establishment of an ICM Coordinating Committee at GFAR. Sara Gwynn of INASP described her organization’s work on information access for research and education, library and publishing support, training, and troubleshooting. The major strategic framework through which many of these activities are coordinated is the Programme for Enhancement of Research Information (PERI). Amongst other services, access is provided to developing countries to over 17,000 full-text journals from 42 commercial publishers at much reduced prices, and scientific publishing is supported through the African Journals Online (AJOL) initiative. Three concluding points were made: (i) collaboration is essential to these efforts; (ii) open access provides much valuable scientific information; and (iii) access to commercially published scientific information remains important. Hansjorg Neun, Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), described the organization’s 20 year history, and the range of activities which now includes links with 8,000 organizations and 34,000 individuals through their many activities such as the “SPORE” magazine, the “ICT Update”, “Agritrade” etc. The key message from CTA’s 2005 evaluation was the need to improve efficiency, and this is leading to a restructuring of the organization. The principal challenges for collaboration were the need to respect partners’ organizational missions, to understand donors’ expectations, and to determine how the separate strategic plans can be enriched while still contributing to the combined plan. Two presentations summarising the key issues then concluded the opening session. Steve Katz from FAO presented the background to the initiative on coherence in agricultural information systems, which had been developed to address the challenge of coping with the huge size and disorganization of the web in the context of distributed information systems such as the AGRIS network. The approach had been to maximize the use of available tools while avoiding duplication, by working with standards, metadata schemes, shared applications, the use of the various controlled vocabularies, and the mapping relations between them. At the same time, coherence had arisen as an issue at the institutional level for FAO, which had taken the approach to work toward developing a layer of shared interoperability between decentralized datasets and value-added information systems. In this context, a review was provided of the AgMES, the documents Application Profile, and a new Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS). In addition, a new website “Agricultural Information Management Standards” was unveiled (http://www.fao.org/aims/) as a collaborative space for accessing metadata standards information and other IT related tools, within which a discussion space had been seen as important for building collaboration. Ajit Maru from GFAR summarized the output of a study coordinated by his organization in 2005 that had assessed the broad range of activities related to institutional networks and capacity building in agricultural scientific and technical information. The study had highlighted the drivers of change as being global competitiveness, an emerging global

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agricultural technology market, a growing desire to manage institutional intellectual property, interest in public-private-community partnerships in agriculture, and the new ICT tools. The study had concluded that the basic requirement was for strong national and sub-national information systems, with fully distributed models of information management in order to maximize ownership, and flexibility that was based on web-enabled systems that were able to support multilingual content. The requirement for stronger institutional mechanisms was identified for supporting collaboration, infrastructure development, and the development of tools and standards. Points raised during the discussion session that followed the above presentations highlighted the need to look at information and knowledge exchange in terms of social issues and the role of intermediaries in expanding to a broader range of clients such as rural communities and policymakers. However, the demand for change and the market have to be quantified so that products, services and messages are accessible in cost as well as content, and that they are sustainable from the supply-side.

2. GOAL AND OUTCOMES Participants agreed that their collective goal was that stakeholders in agricultural science and technology should be better informed so that they make better decisions (researchers, extensionists) and develop policies based on evidence (policymakers), leading to the economic and social enhancement of rural livelihoods of the poor. A set of outcomes were foreseen as emerging from follow-up to the Consultation: • agricultural information professionals would be able to ensure their work has more

impact and to work together more effectively; • coherence and integration of agricultural information management and systems

would be strengthened; • national and regional policy frameworks would recognise the value of and support

agricultural information systems.

3. GENERAL FINDINGS The Consultation had been convened partly in order to consider the nature of international institutional partnerships. It was generally recognized that new institutional mechanisms are required to maximise the potential of recent technical advances. Extensive discussion on participants’ experience in organizational networks produced a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses of such networks and mechanisms of collaboration. There was no agreement during the Consultation on precisely what form an improved global institutional approach should take, but options were identified for discussion and finalization in the near future. A model was developed for mapping the major factors affecting agricultural information systems, loosely based on the model developed by the CGIAR and referred to during the Consultation as the “onion model”.

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The elements of the model were then analysed to establish the most appropriate order for their implementation. Topic Action Vision/strategy

The top priority is to clarify the vision of what is to be achieved, supported by a strategy that lays out the goals and objectives.

Advocacy

A planned, deliberate, and sustained effort is required to increase awareness of the vision and strategy amongst key stakeholders at policy and institutional level.

Capital

Advocacy should stimulate investment, which can then be channelled into appropriate areas within the strategy.

Policy

Policies should then be developed to structure processes and determine functions of human/technological resources.

Partnership

Advocacy should also lead to collaboration (public/private) based on a shared vision; mechanisms and resources, and clear incentives for all parties.

Content management Content must be made available in digital format, and technical resources (e.g. standards, tools, applications, languages) must be developed and applied to facilitate digitization of content.

Capacity building

Establishment of policies and procedures must be followed by continuing enhancement of human resource capacities through training.

Organizational culture Development of appropriate approach to roles and responsibilities of, and inter-relationships between, internal stakeholders.

Infrastructure

Appropriate ICT facilities have to be developed to support wider connectivity within the available telecommunications environment.

The Consultation participants attributed high priority for intervention to three major areas of the “onion” model, namely advocacy, people (especially capacity building), and content, recognizing that in fact they are closely inter-related. Other areas in the “onion” model were felt to be outside the scope of the Expert Consultation, namely infrastructure

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(especially IT), financial issues, and internal institutional issues such as intellectual property rights. Participants also recognized the critical importance of enhancing collaboration as a prime objective of the Consultation, and spent considerable time analysing the critical success factors at national, regional and international level and outlining potential mechanisms for the development of some form of more formal partnership or alliance.

4. ACTION AREAS 4.1 Advocacy As above, participants recognized that a planned, deliberate, and sustained effort is required to increase awareness of the vision and strategy amongst key stakeholders at policy and institutional level. Opportunities and Constraints Participants identified opportunities and constraints associated with advocacy for more coherent approaches to the management of information on agricultural science and technology. Opportunities Constraints National Ability to attract funding

Support from policymakers Lack of strategies National priorities distorted by international partners Poor link to national development plans/policies Lack of advocacy skills Lack of communication with international level

Regional Representation of national members’ interests Intermediary role Ability to facilitate collective action

Lack of strategies Poor advocacy and communication skills Weak links to national strategies, needs, and delivery Poor linkages across agriculture sub-sectors

International Strong mission and vision Strong position and ability in advocacy Institutionalization Ability to lead advocacy partnerships

Policy differences amongst stakeholders Insufficient advocacy and public awareness Poor match with national needs Supply-driven approach

The meeting recognized the need for wider awareness and active involvement amongst the range of stakeholder constituencies, given the broad lack of awareness of information management issues at policy level. Progress in the area of advocacy can draw on the strengths of organizations at different levels (national, regional, international) were recognized, provided that certain points that require attention are addressed. Development at the national level depends on enhancing the support from policymakers, particularly when attracting resources funds. Organizations at the regional level can advocate for and facilitate collective actions by playing an intermediary role. Institutionalisation and consortium-like approaches form a potential that can be developed at the international level. Communication between the three major levels was felt to require improvement. It was also recognized that advocacy activities need to accommodate the differences between the constituencies. Proposed actions The key objective would be to secure commitment and participation from critical members of the various stakeholder constituencies in agricultural science and technology

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from different levels (local, national, regional, international). Participants proposed the following actions: 1. Consultation mechanisms. Development of a “virtual” space to facilitate discussion

and agreement on (i) a “vision” for the initiative, and (ii) a plan for an advocacy campaign. The plan would need to address the fact that communication at the different levels and between them has been the weakest aspect of collaboration to date, and to tailor messages appropriately for each stakeholder group. The suggestions for activities on advocacy arising from the GLOBAL.RAIS meeting would be reviewed as part of the process.

2. Champions. Identification and mobilization of suitably-placed “champions” at national, regional and international level to advocate for enhanced agricultural information management, with the appropriate messages as above.

3. Key events. Identification within the advocacy plan of key international and regional events related to agricultural science and technology which could (i) benefit from strategic advocacy inputs in the area of information management, and (ii) offer opportunities for gathering inputs to the advocacy plan from donors, partners, and ICM professionals.

4. Evidence of impact. Gathering of evidence of the development impact of more effective information management, to provide substance for the advocacy messages. Specific new initiatives should be developed to assess impact, including development of key indicators and the documentation of positive and negative lessons learnt through case studies/stories. Once developed, impact indictors would need to be actively disseminated for sponsors and donors to include in assessment, monitoring and evaluation of information management interventions.

5. Training materials. Development of resource materials and training courses for capacity building in advocacy techniques and communication, particularly related to IM/IT issues, would assist in training of managers, scientists, academics, and information managers to convince policymakers on the need for formulation of information strategies and policies.

4.2 Capacity building Participants recognized the need for continuing enhancement of human resource capacities through training. Opportunities for intervention Participants identified opportunities and constraints at three levels for capacity building in the management of agricultural science and technology information. Opportunities Constraints National Familiarity with local conditions Few skilled IM personnel

High turnover in IM professionals Need for continuous education as technologies change

Regional Availability of experts in different country Facilitation of capacity building & training Ability to derive economies of scale

Few/No IM professionals Lack of stability in staffing Need to accommodate variations in national capacities Training to be provided in appropriate language

International In-depth accumulated IM expertise Coordination of international training initiatives Ability to produce training resource materials

Insufficient resources for face-to-face training globally Few established networks of IM professionals

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Participants identified the strongest need for capacity building as being in organizations at national and sub-national level, with a continuing requirement to upgrade and refresh technical skills in information management, and to raise awareness to institutional issues amongst decision-makers. Organizations at the regional level were seen to be most effective when acting as facilitators of capacity building and institutional networking at national level, recognizing that they have to manage with limited and unstable resources of their own. Organizations at the international level should exploit their in-depth accumulated expertise in information management to support activities at regional or sub-regional level, rather than intervening directly with national partners. However, a major constraint was identified in terms of the large variation in the capacities, resources, and infrastructure of national organizations, which implied the need for customized approaches. A significant gap was identified in the relative weakness of networks or communities for agricultural information professionals, leaving a clear demand for stronger organizations or associations at international (e.g. International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists - IAALD) or regional (e.g. Inter-American Association of Librarians, Documentalists and Specialists in Agricultural Information - AIBDA) level. Proposed actions Generic areas of action in capacity building for implementation in 2005/06 were identified, within which specific actions were highlighted in international or regional contexts. 1. Institutional support. It was recommended that regional and/or sub/regional fora

should become the clearing houses for capacity building initiatives. To facilitate follow-up, it was further proposed that the fora within each (sub-)region map the partners, experiences, resources, and projects to ensure that the key IM/IT players collaborate effectively. It was also agreed that training at all levels should ideally be made in an appropriately supportive institutional context, with adequate screening of trainees, evaluation of the training itself, and follow-up after the training. Examples of regional initiatives discussed during the Consultation were: o Eastern & Central Africa – in the Regional Agricultural Information Network (RAIN)

by Association for Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) with support from FAO, GFAR and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA);

o Near East & North Africa – in the Association of Agricultural Research Institutions in the Near East and North Africa (AARINENA) network, starting with a national pilot in Egypt under the NARIMS initiative;

o Caucasus and Central Asia – in the AgroWEB network with support from FAO and GFAR, with follow-up focusing initially on the central Caucasus sub-region;

o Latin America – through the INFOTEC network of FORAGRO.

2. Professional association for information specialists. IAALD regional chapters or separate regional associations strengthened to build networks of information professionals, based on the identification of strategic partners in each region and the support from existing chapters or associations.

3. Training targets and formats. Three main stakeholder groups were identified as requiring training, namely: (i) information specialists on methodologies and tools, and (ii) managers and decision-makers on strategic issues, and (iii) researchers and academics on the use of e-resources and on the dissemination of their outputs. In addition, three formats of training in universities and NARS were identified, which could also be coordinated at (sub-)regional level, namely: (i) continuing education through distance learning; (ii) short-term face-to-face courses; and (iii) formal post-graduate courses towards certification.

4. Training Resource Materials. Participants highlighted the benefits of two particular capacity building partnerships already in progress where agencies are collaborating at

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the international level to produce resource materials for distance and face-to-face learning formats. These were the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) and ITrain Online. Continuing development of these initiatives was strongly supported, with specific actions identified for 2006: o Evaluation of the first IMARK module on “Management of electronic documents”

(English version) by independent consultants under the coordination of FAO and CTA by June 2006;

o Availability of IMARK modules in other languages, specifically Arabic and Russian; o Integration of IMARK more explicitly in ITrain Online portal, to be coordinated by

FAO, INASP; o Promotion and use of ITrain Online as a clearing house for e-learning activities.

Development of such initiatives was seen as the basis for the sustained development of institutional and individual capacities in key aspects of agricultural information management. This approach depends considerably on the catalytic role of the regional and sub-regional fora, and continuing support from the international agencies offering material and financial resources. 4.3 Content management Participants agreed that a key issue for follow-up was content management, given the need to make information available in digital format, and for technical resources (e.g. standards, tools, applications, languages) to be developed and applied to facilitate digitization of content. Opportunities for intervention Participants identified opportunities and constraints at three levels for technical issues related to the management of agricultural science and technology information. Opportunities Constraints National Access to national and local content

Ability to pool national content resources Adoption of common systems and standards

Lack of use and uniformity of international standards Weak content management processes Access to tools & technologies for managing content

Regional Ability to facilitate intra-regional: • adoption of common standards • exchange of information content

Need to accommodate differences in language Lack of applications and tools to manage content Lack of international mechanisms to discuss content management issues

International Strong ability in tools/applications development Mandate to develop normative standards/tools Ability to deal with language issues Generation of global public goods (content)

Parallel development of standards Lack of capacities/training for implementing new IM techniques Lack of international mechanisms to discuss content management issues

Analysis of the opportunities showed that, at the national level, content resources could be pooled to enhance access to locally-derived content. Such sharing would demand strong standards for information exchange and strong management processes, as well as access to appropriate tools and technologies. At the regional level, the uptake of new methodologies and tools could be facilitated, as well as consideration of policy and operational issues related to intellectual property rights and language differences. There is a lack of systems applications to manage access to content. At the international level, there is comparative advantage in setting standards and in development of specialized tools and applications, especially to address issues such as language. The international

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organizations with a stake in the process could develop a strong involvement in the Open Access Initiative given their mandate to produce public goods. Three special issues were highlighted as a result of these discussions, namely: open access publishing, interlinking different information types, and subject vocabularies. Special issue 1: open access publishing. The open access movement has its roots in the development of electronic print archives for sharing the results of ongoing scholarly research, specifically in the physics and related areas, prior to peer review and journal publication. The Budapest Open Access Initiative (OAI) in 2001 introduced a new business model for academic publishing with the following objectives: • to make research articles in all academic fields freely available; • to make open access publishing economically available; • to promote self-archiving by scientists. By open access the initiative means: “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself”. The OAI aims to overcome the limitations of the present model for scholarly publishing, which is expensive for the academic community in richer countries, completely unaffordable for those in developing countries, and too slow in making research articles visible. The core of open access publishing is self-archiving in institutional or other open archives while continuing to publish in traditional peer reviewed journals. Open access journal publishers have other business models charging authors or institutions to process their articles, rather than charging readers to access their publications. Long-term financial sustainability of open access journals in a strictly commercial context is still an issue On the technical side, the Open Access publishing initiative has created protocols and methodologies to access decentralized open Archives and to harvest metadata, open archive metadata harvesting protocol (OAI-MHP) Open Archive Data providers offer their metadata for harvesting. Open Archive service providers create value-added services for harvested metadata repositories. The importance of common exchange formats has been evidenced by theses initiatives. In the area of agriculture and related subject areas, the “agStandards” initiative started in 2000 lead to the establishment of a specific metadata registry (name-space) called “AGMES” to complement the more general Dublin Core name-space for sharing metadata on electronic documents. A metadata schema (application profile) for publications and other document-like information objects (DLIOs) has been developed based on Dublin Core and AGMES and it has been proposed as an exchange format for open archive services in agriculture and related subject areas. Presentations were made on all these aspects. Special issue 2: interlinking different information types. Participants representing a range of communities dealing with other types of information presented the current state of affairs with regard to data standards for statistical data, geospatial data and genetic resources. Technologies are emerging to interlink these different types of information, and the presentation from the genetic resources area pointed out how powerful a cross-application search can become through a common exchange format. It was generally recognized and agreed that interoperability across different information object types and applications is necessary and methodologies have to be developed and applied to facilitate this interoperability. Important lessons have been derived from the experiences different standard-setting communities: • Standards should be kept simple, to facilitate their adoption by data owners. • Mutual trust should be built, for example by acknowledging data ownership. • The benefits should be transparent for each participant in a co-operative effort.

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• There must be a real ‘business case’ for adoption of standards. Development of interoperability should be based on strong demand from users for co-operative services. Special issue 3: subject vocabularies. The future plans of the three main thesauri for agricultural terminology – FAO’s AGROVOC Thesaurus, the NAL Thesaurus, and the CAB Thesaurus – were presented. The thesauri play an important role in the specific workflows of their originating organizations, and therefore there is little likelihood of their merger. It is important that they are made available (possibly as webservices as has been achieved for the NAL thesaurus and AGROVOC) and mapped to each other to form the basis for specific vocabularies and task-oriented ontologies. Examples of applications of ontology-driven information systems were reviewed. A number of important issues in the area of subject vocabularies were identified: • increasing need for multilinguality; • need for taxonomies (derived from subject vocabularies) for structuring Web sites

etc; • opportunities to validate vocabularies with users amongst the participating

organizations. Actions Participants identified three priority areas for ongoing cooperation in relation to content management. 1. Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) Web site

(http://www.fao.org/aims). FAO’s goal for the site is to document and facilitate the harmonization of the various efforts currently taking place in the development of methodologies, standards and applications for agricultural information systems; in order to provide a 'one-stop' access to system designers and implementers. Participants agreed that FAO should continue to develop the site as a reference resource and a forum on standards, tools, and applications to facilitate collaboration, partnership, and networking among partners. The forum function would essentially comprise a selection of discussion lists. Partners agreed to review and use the standards and guidelines made available from the site before embarking on creating new information systems from scratch. It was further agreed that partners would share their standards, tools and vocabularies from the site for reuse by others. There are two levels at which the different information resources can be integrated into the site:

Partial Integration: Integrate by creating a registry with metadata about the different resources and link them back to the originating sources (located on the server of the participating partner).

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• Full Integration: Integrate not only the metadata about the resources but also maintain a copy of the actual resource on the FAO server.

2. Project-related information. Participants agreed that FAO should analyse the future of CARIS-related activities, with special regard to the central CARIS database and support to member states, in terms of the development of a portal to facilitate decentralised data management and ownership. Attention should be given to the possibility of closer relationships or even integration with the WISARD system managed by the International Agriculture Centre (IAC) of the Netherlands. Mechanisms would need to be developed to ensure an effective changeover to any new approach that is selected, and eventually guides and management tools would be required together with support and advice for capacity building in countries.

3. Development of public domain software tools and applications. It was recognized that many national and regional organizations cannot afford commercial software tools and applications for information management and dissemination, and that a continuing role could be foreseen for “freeware” in the context of resources such as the WebAGRIS toolset. Participants agreed that priority should be given to

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development of tools that allow integration of information about projects, organizations and persons, such as currently being developed in Egypt under the NARIMS project.

4. Development of “Learning Resource Centres”. These Centres would primarily consist of electronic repositories for storage and exchange of public domain digital learning objects comprising a wide range of types of teaching and learning materials. Examples of such repositories would be the CGIAR Learning Resource Centre and ITrain Online. Strong links would be maintained with national organizations and networks, including governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Participants also formulated “demonstration projects” in the following three areas to show the benefits of cooperation, building on existing technologies wherever possible. Ad-hoc working groups were formed, and timetables were proposed in order to obtain results by mid-2006. 5. Common metadata exchange format. Tools will be developed for enhancing access to

information in document repositories, including federated searching and/or harvesting technologies where appropriate. This project will improve access to documents and similar information objects in the area of agriculture, fishery, forestry, nutrition and other subjects important for people who are working on combating hunger. The project will establish a common standard for data exchange, and make it possible to use decentralized information by different partners without duplication of work. It will create a common search methodology for partners and increases the effectiveness of document recall and search precision.

6. Community directory for information on Organizations and for News-feeds/RSS. A plug-in tool will be developed to enable filtering according to content and metadata. The tool should be available for different Web sites to incorporate and show information relevant to their area of interest. The basis for this project will be the use of common application profiles (or standards for sharing information) and the use of RSS for ‘making available’ information to others.

7. Multilingual ontologies. With a focus on capturing local knowledge, a pilot project will develop a multilingual ontology in the area of terminology related to the mango tree/fruit. The objective of the project will be to represent between 20 to 50 concepts related to mango in the following languages: English, Hindi, Thai, Chinese and Latin American Spanish, including all local terms and possible spelling variants. A tool will then allow the visualization of these concepts and their relationships. The benefits will be the possibility of using local knowledge in the indexing and search functionalities in information systems related to agriculture, the possibility of getting related vocabularies from a broad thesaurus (e.g. AGROVOC) and the possibility of doing cross-language searches. A parallel effect will be the dissemination of the methodology that would be an integral part the AOS Project.

5. PARTNERSHIP Achievement of the above actions will require stronger institutional collaboration and partnership at all levels, namely international, regional, national and sub-national. Members of Track 1 of the Consultation were provided with a series of case study presentations from participants on international thematic networks, regional networks, and national networks. Lessons had been drawn and challenges identified within these cases. Following the presentations, the issues were further analysed by working groups. Participants also drew on the output of previous meetings and studies, including the reports listed in Annex 1.

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5.1 Analysis of existing partnerships Good Practices in Networking Participants analysed existing national and regional networks and identified a range of characteristics found in successful networks. The critical success factors for national institutional networks were seen as being: • Existence of a clearly defined strategy and objectives; • Tangible commitment to the strategy from the range of major players and • Explicit support from government; • Assurance of adequate funding resources for the network members; • Strong but sensitive leadership provided by a national focal point; • Participatory approach in the national network with appropriate recognition of all

partners; • Development of information repositories such as national databases, either (a)

metadata, (b) abstracts or (c) full text, of documents such as reports, theses, journal articles, and conference papers, and people/organizations/activities;

• Adoption of a single model for information management based on common formats and standards;

• Focus on content quality; • Focus on development of human resources. The critical success factors for regional networks were seen as being: • Existence of a regional information strategy; • Development of a Secretariat role for regional activities; • Focus on capacity building at national level; • Focus on the human dimension amongst the information specialists and development

of a sense of collective action and support; • Raising awareness of the issues at political level • Formation of strategic partnerships amongst the major stakeholder organizations Opportunities for Intervention Participants identified opportunities and constraints at three levels for development of institutional networks related to the management of agricultural science and technology information.

Opportunities Constraints National Strong mandate

Ownership and commitment Familiarity with stakeholders Positive organizational culture

Organizational politics Poor sharing culture Lack of teamwork in management

Regional Convening role for regional initiatives Avoidance of duplication Political neutrality Ability to facilitate: • transboundary information flows; • exchange of experiences; • collective action; • thematic networks.

Dependency on external funding sources Need to accommodate variations in national: • institutional capacities & resources • priorities • sharing culture Need to balance demands and resolve conflicts between countries

International Convening role for global initiatives Political neutrality Complementary roles for major organizations Ability to access new information technologies Existing mechanisms for information exchange Public/private partnerships Platform to share and learn from experience

Institutional competition/rivalries Lack of collaboration between networks Duplication of effort Poor sharing of experiences and tools Poor coordination among international organizations Isolation of sectoral networks (e.g. forestry, fisheries)

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5.2 Motivation This important area was analysed further to define the expectations and benefits of partnership at national, regional, or international level as perceived by the stakeholder organizations represented at the Expert Consultation. Expectations. It was recognized that organizations would have certain expectations from a major partnership, which were grouped into the principal areas of “Values”, “Complementarity” and “Increased Impact”. The first of these related to the need for a shared vision related to information management and a common set of ethics (e.g. openness, participation, informality, opportunism, strong commitment, and accountability), with buy-in to each others’ initiatives which would lead to tangible benefits to each organization’s shareholders. The second area was based on the need to complement existing strategies and priorities of the partner organizations, which should then provide a synergy derived from common objectives and a focus on common thrusts in information-related activities that would exploit the complementarities between the organizations’ expertise, resources, and experiences. The collaboration should also provide each partner with access to new information resources and a recognized role and influence within the partnership, with opportunities for leadership based on comparative advantage. The expectations on outcomes related to “Increased Impact” based on the ability to leverage support from a range of donors and resource agencies from other sectors into agricultural Information world through advocacy, and on concrete actions leading to tangible outputs, with benefits to all parties and stakeholders. Benefits. These were seen to fall into three principal areas. The first area related to “Values”, where encouragement and support would be derived for shared elements of visions and strategies for information agricultural management at national, regional and global level. Under “Complementarity”, the partnership should provide a stronger advocacy platform and encourage collaborative activities, while providing a platform for peers to interact. The last area of benefits, “Effectiveness”, related to areas such as wider impact of their own work, cost-sharing, economies of scale, and sharing of resources such as information content, technical expertise, and capital. Organizations would look to increase productivity in information management and exchange, and to overcome their own weaknesses by access to complimentary expertise. At a technical level, effectiveness would be enhanced by development and application of common standards, methodologies and tools for agricultural information management. 5.3 Mechanisms for collaboration at international level Participants felt that a more structured global partnership was required to bring together the existing range of initiatives into a more cohesive alliance that would increase the chances of enhancing information management in agricultural science and technology. It was also agreed to be important to ensure that the accumulated experiences of previous initiatives such as AGRIS and “ICM4ARD” have been fully incorporated. Such a partnership should fulfil the expectations of the partners as outlined above, as well as bring the benefits identified. It should have a clear identity, be strongly action-oriented, and be supported by the application of significant resources by the partners, while retaining a sense of informality. It was felt strongly that this partnership should not take the form of a new organization, but rather should be formulated as an initiative supported by an alliance that focus on clearly identified high priority issues. A clear need was also identified to develop cross linkages between thematic networks for information management in subject-oriented communities (e.g. forestry, fisheries etc).

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In terms of governance of the partnership, a Steering Group lead by one or more of the convening organization(s) was felt to offer an acceptable mix of leadership and informality. The membership of the Steering Group would need to be determined. Responsibility for activities would then be attributed to specific interest groups, or Task Forces, of organizations within the partnership, which would develop communities of practices supported by electronic fora, and foster active communication to reach agreement and resolve any areas of disagreement. Initially at least, groups were foreseen for “Advocacy”, “Capacity building”, “Content Management”, with the potential for a group on “Evaluation”. Regular meetings should be organized to discuss strategic and operational issues related to the groups’ work plans and outputs. The overall initiative would benefit from a portal website providing a gateway to the various resources and a repository for case studies of experiences at regional and national level. Participants nominated their organizations for involvement in the initial three Task Forces to be established in the follow-up to the Consultation as in the table below. Those organizations that agreed to take a coordination role in each Task Force have been identified with an asterisk.

Advocacy Capacity Building Content ASARECA CABI CARDI CGIAR CTA DFID FAO* FORAGRO GFAR* IAALD

AgroWEB ASARECA CTA Cirad CGIAR* DFID FAO* FORAGRO IICA INASP ITOCA

ASARECA CABI CGIAR* CLAES FAO* FORAGRO IAC IICA NAL/AGNIC ZADI

Three virtual workspaces would be convened by FAO and GFAR for the Task Forces to enable participants of the Expert Consultation to contribute to further development of the outputs of the working groups. The Task Forces would look firstly to develop consensus on the actions to be taken, then to assign responsibility for their implementation, and to monitor and report on outputs and outcomes.

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Annex 1

Background Documents and other Materials Distributed 1. Second Consultation on Agricultural Information Management. AGRIS – A Strategy

for an international network for information in agricultural sciences and technology within the WAICENT framework. FAO, Rome, Italy. 2002.

2. Report of the Discussions on the New AGRIS Strategy. FAO, Rome, Italy. 2003. 3. Addendum to Report of the Discussions on the New AGRIS Strategy. FAO, Rome,

Italy. 2005. 4. GLOBal ALliance of the Regional Agricultural Information Systems (GLOBAL.RAIS) Inter-

Regional Workshop: Towards a Global Agenda for ICM in ARD, Proceedings. Global Forum on Agricultural Research, Rome, Italy. 2004.

5. Furthering the Sharing and Exchanging Agricultural Research and Development

Information: A GLOBal.RAIS Proposal. Global Forum on Agricultural Research, Rome, Italy. 2005.

6. Evaluation of Agricultural Research Information System managing data on

Institutions, Experts, Activities, and Research Outputs: Executive Summary. Global Forum on Agricultural Research, Rome, Italy. 2005.

7. Fertile Ground: Opportunities for greater coherence in agricultural information

systems. H. Besemer, C. Addison, Ferguson. Research Report No. 19. International Institute for Communication and Development, The Hague, Netherlands. 2003.

8. Coherence in Agricultural Information: Report of an expert workshop held on 19-20,

2005 in Lexington, KY, USA. FAO, Rome, Italy. 2005. 9. Report of the FAO Expert Consultation on Mechanisms for Documenting and

Disseminating Outputs of Agricultural Research in Sub-Saharan Africa, 12-14 May 2004. FAO, Rome, Italy. 2004.

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Annex 2

List of Participants

Mr. Chris Addison Communiq.org Square de Meeus 22b Brussels BELGIUM e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Luz Marina Alvare Head Librarian International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) 2033 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006-1002 USA e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Thomas Baker University of Gottingen Georg-August-Universität Wilhelmsplatz 1 (Aula) 37073 Göttingen Germany e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Koen Beelen International Agricultural Centre (IAC) P.O. Box 88 NL 6700 AB Wageningen Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Marc Bernard Information Centre for Biological Diversity (ZADI) Villichgasse 17 53177 Bonn Germany e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Hugo Besemer Bircim Bredeweg 17 6668 AR Randwijk The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Chun Chang Scientech Documentation and Information Center (SDIC) Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) 12 Zhongguancun South Street Beijing 100081 China e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Jayanta Chatterjee Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur 208016 India e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Gracian Chimwaza Information Training and Outreach Center for Africa - ITOCA 11 Churchill Rd Alexandra Park Harare Zimbabwe e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. J. Chisenga FAO Regional Office for Africa FAO Building Gamel Abdul Nasser Road PO Box 1628 Accra GHANA e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Laura Coto Royo Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)/Tropical Agricultural Research and Education Center (CATIE) Turrialba Costa Rica e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Marie Claude Deboin Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (Cirad ) Avenue Agropolis, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5 France e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Claudette DeFreitas Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) P.O. Bag 212, UWI Campus, St Augustine Trinidad & Tobago e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. M. Demes FAO Sub-Regional Office for Central and Eastern Europe Benczur utca 34 1068 Budapest HUNGARYe-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

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mailto:[email protected]















Ms. Elizabeth Dodsworth CAB International Nosworthy Way Wallingford Oxfordshire OX10 8DE United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr Thierry Doudet Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Postbus 380 6700 AJ Wageningen Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Clement Entsua-Mensah Institute For Scientific And Technological Information (Insti) P.O. Box M32 Accra Ghana e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Samy Gaijy International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) Via dei Tre Denari 472/a 00057 Maccarese (Fiumicino) Rome, Italy e-mail:

Track 2

Mr. Jean Francois Giovannetti Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) Paris France e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Elizabeth Goldberg International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) Via dei Tre Denari 472/a 00057 Maccarese (Fiumicino) Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Magnus Grylle Information Systems Officer Forestry Information and Liaison Service Forestry Policy and Information Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Sara Gwynn International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) 58 St Aldates Oxford OX1 1ST UK e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Michael Hailu Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) P.O. BOX 6596, JKPWB Jakarta 10065 Indonesia e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Barbara Hutchinson, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) University of Arizona Tucson, AZ USA 85721-0036 USA e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Steve Katz Chief Waicent Information Dissemination Management Branch (GILW) Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Asanee Kawtrakul Kasetsart University 50 Phahonyothin Road Chatuchak Bangkok 10900 Thailand e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Johannes Keizer Information Systems Officer Waicent Information Dissemination Management Branch Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Joost Lieshout WIS International Oude Houtensepad 18 3582CW Utrecht The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Nick Maliha International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syrian Arab Republic e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Arman Manukyan Agroweb Network Yerevan Armenia e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. F. Martin FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean Avenida Dag Hammarskjold, 3241 Vitacura Casilla 10095 Santiago Chilee-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

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Mr. Ajit Maru 55, Milan Park Near Sandesh Press Vastrapur Ahmedabad, Gujarat India e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Robert Mayo Senior Statistician Basic Food and Agriculture Statistics Service (ESSB) Statistics Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Mr. Eero Mikkola The Global Network for Forest Science Cooperation (IUFRO) Mariabrunn (BFW) Hauptstrasse 7 A-1140 Vienna Austria e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Patrizia Monteduro Biological Scientist Research, Extension and Training Division (SDR) FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

N/A

Ms. Dorothy Mukhebi The Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) Plot 15 John Babiiha Road P.O.Box 765 Entebbe Uganda e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Masahiko Nagai Project Researcher Center for Spatial Information Science The University of Tokyo 435 Research Centers CSIS, 5-1-5, Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa-shi Chiba 277-8568 Japane-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Hansjorg Neun Director Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Postbus 380 6700 AJ Wageningen Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Jacqueline Nyagahima Regional Agricultural Information Network (RAIN-ASARECA) Plot 5, Mpigi Road P.O Box 765, Entebbe Uganda e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Viviana Palmieri FORAGRO Technical Secretariat Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) San Jose Costa Rica e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Shuchun Pan Scientech Documentation and Information Center (SDIC) Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) 12 Zhongguancun South Street Beijing 100081 China e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Richard Pepe Fishery Information Officer Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit (FIDI) Fisheries Department FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Enrica Porcari CGIAR c/o International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) Via dei Tre Denari 472/a 00057 Maccarese (Fiumicino) Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Robert PortegiesZwart Information Systems Officer Waicent Capacity Building and Outreach Branch Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. Ahmed Rafea Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES) PO Box 100 Dokki Giza Egypt e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms. Rachel Rege Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) P.O.Box 57811 City Square Nairobi, 00200 Kenya e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Mr. M. Riggs FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific 39 Phra Atit Road Bangkok 10200 THAILAND e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

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Mr. Stephen Rudgard Chief Waicent Capacity Building and Outreach Branch Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1 Ms. Aree Thunkijjanukij Kasetsart University 50 Phahonyothin Road Chatuchak Bangkok 10900 Thailand e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Ms. Sophie Treinen Information Management Specialist Waicent Capacity Building and Outreach Branch Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Ms.Gauri Salokhe Information Management Officer Waicent Information Dissemination Management Branch (GILW) Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Zhong Wang Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences - Insititute of Science Technolgy Information (ISTI-GAAS) Guangdong P.R.China e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Margherita Sini Information Management Specialist Waicent Information Dissemination Management Branch (GILW) Library and Documentation Systems Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2

Mr. Dylan Winder Department for International Development (DFID) 1 Palace Street London SW1E 5HE United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

N/A Mr. Olanrewaju Babatunde Smith Executive Secretary of GFAR Research and Technology Development Service (SDRR) Research, Extension and Training Division FAO Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Mr. Peter Young NAL-USDA Beltsville USA e-mail: [email protected]

Track 1

Track 1 Mr. Joel Sor Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (Cirad ) Avenue Agropolis, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5 France e-mail: [email protected]

Track 2 Ms. Carol Steel CAB International Nosworthy Way Wallingford Oxfordshire OX10 8DE United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

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Annex 3

Agenda and Schedule

Plenary Session Wednesday 19th October Opening Session Chairperson: Jean-Francois Giovannetti, MAE

09:00-09:15 Opening and Welcome from Anton Mangstl, FAO

09:15-09:30 Keynote Presentation on AGRIS and AGORA by Stephen Rudgard, FAO

09:30-09:45 Keynote Presentation on the ICTKM initiative by Enrica Porcari, CGIAR

09:45-10:00 Keynote Presentation on the ICM4ARD initiative by Ola Smith, GFAR

10:00-10:15 Keynote Presentation on the PERI initiative by Sara Gwynn, INASP

10:15-10:30 Keynote Presentation by Hansjörg Neun, CTA

(10:30-10:50 Coffee/Tea)

10:50-11:20 Presentation on Coherence in Agricultural Information Systems – presentation by Steve Katz, FAO

11:20-12:10 Presentation on Institutional Networks and Capacity Building – presentation by Ajit Maru, GFAR

12:10-12:40 Plenary discussion on identification of key issues (12:40-14:00 Lunch)

----------------------------------

Track 1: Networks, Capacity Building and Governance Wednesday 19th October Session 1: Development of institutional networks Chairperson: Koen Beelen, IAC

Presentations

14:00-14:15 Overview of the current status of the Global Forestry Information System (GFIS) – presentation by Eero Mikkola, IUFRO

14:15-14-30 Overview of the current status of the SIST project – presentation by Joel Sor, Cirad

14:30-14:45 Regional case study on ASARECA-RAIN – presentation by Dorothy Mukhebi, ASARECA

14:45-15:00 Regional case study on FORAGRO – presentation by Viviana Palmieri, IICA

15:00-15:30 Open Discussion. Facilitator: Chris Addison, Bircim

15:30-15:50 Coffee/Tea

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15:50-16:05 National case study from Ghana – presentation by Clement Entsua-Mensah, INSTI

16:05-16:20 National case study from Egypt – presentation by Ahmed Rafea, CLAES

16:20-16:35 National case study from China – presentation by Shuchun Pan, CAAS


Thursday 20th October 08:30-10:00 Working Groups : Development of institutional networks - Options and

Choices for Future Strategies and Activities

(10:00-10:20 Coffee/Tea)

10:20-11:30 Reports from Working Groups and Open Discussion. Facilitator: Chris Addison, Bircim

11:30-12:00 Open Access Publishing – presentation by Luz Marina Alvare, IFPRI


(12:40-14:00 Lunch)

Session 2: Capacity Building and Training

Presentations

14:00-14:15 The IMARK initiative – presentation by Stephen Rudgard, FAO

14:15-14:30 The ITrainOnline initiative – presentation by Sara Gwynn, INASP

14:30-14:45 The VASAT Initiative – presentation by Enrica Porcari, CGIAR

14:45-16:30 Working Groups : Capacity Building and Training – Options and Choices for Future Strategies and Activities

(15:30-15:45 Coffee/Tea)

16:30-17:15 Reports from Working Groups and Open Discussion. Facilitator: Chris Addison, Bircim

Friday 21st October Session 3: An alliance to promote greater Coherence in Agricultural

Information Systems

09:00-09:20 Overview of Working Group outputs from previous sessions – presented by Chris Addison, Bircim

09:20-11:00 Working Groups: An alliance to promote greater Coherence – Options and Choices for Future Strategies and Activities

(11:00-11:30 Coffee/Tea)

----------------------------------

Track 2: Standards, Technologies and Protocols Wednesday 19th October Session 1 Outlook on Data Standards – some examples

Presentations

14:00-14:10 Developing, maintaining, and customizing a global standard: the experience of Dublin Core – presentation by Thomas Baker

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14:10-14:20 Statistical Data – presentation by Robert Mayo, FAO

14:20-14:30 Geospatial Information – presentation by Patrizia Monteduro, FAO

14:30-14:40 Scientific and Technological Data: Genetic Resources presentation by Samy Gaijy, IPGRI

14:40-14:50 AGMES: its motivation and role – presentation by Gauri Salokhe, FAO

14:50-15:30 Open Discussion. Facilitator: Hugo Besemer, Bircim

(15:30-15:50 Coffee/Tea) Session 2: Metadata Applications and Standards for Textual Information

Presentations

15:50-16:15 The role of bibliographic databases today and Open Archive Services in Agricultural Science and Technology – presentation by Johannes Keizer, FAO

16:15-16:30 Tools and Protocols for OAI data and service providers – presentation by Hugo Besemer, Bircim

16:30-16:50 Metadata for Projects, Institutions, Experts, and Events – presentation by Joost Lieshout, IAC

16:50-17:30 Open Discussion. Facilitator: Thomas Baker Thursday 20th October

08:30-10:00 Working Groups : Metadata Applications and Standards for Textual Information - Options and Choices for Future Strategies and Activities

10:00-11:00 Reports from Working Groups and Open Discussion. Facilitator: Hugo Besemer, Bircim

(11:00-11:20 Coffee/Tea)

Session 3: Subject Vocabularies

Presentations

11:20-11:45 From Thesauri to the Agricultural Ontology Service: the new AGROVOC – presentation by Margherita Sini, FAO

11:45-12:00 Advanced semantic techniques and technologies – presentation by Asanee Kawtrakul, Kasetsart University

12:00-12:45 Open Discussion. Moderator: Hugo Besemer, Bircim

(12:40-14:00 Lunch)

14:00-14:30 Panel Discussion (Elizabeth Dodsworth, Peter Young, Johannes Keizer): Role of the three major agricultural thesauri and further collaboration

14:30-16:00 Working Groups : Subject Vocabularies – Options and Choices for Future Strategies and Activities

(15:30-15:45 Coffee/Tea)

16:00-17:00 Reports from Working Groups and Open Discussion. Facilitator: Hugo Besemer, Bircim

Friday 21st October Session 4: An alliance to promote greater Coherence in Agricultural

Information Systems

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Presentations

09:00-09:20 Overview of Working Group outputs from previous sessions

09:20-11:00 Working Groups: Options and Choices for Future Strategies and Activities.

(11:00-11:30 Coffee/Tea)

----------------------------------

Plenary Session

Friday 21st October

Session: Reports from Tracks Chairperson: Thierry Doudet, CTA

11:30-12:15 Report and Recommendations from Track 1


12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-14:45 Report and Recommendations from Track 2

14:45-15:30 Open Discussion. Facilitator: Hugo Besemer, Bircim

(15:30-15:45 Coffee/Tea)

Session: Action Plan and Closure Chairperson: Dylan Winder, DFID

15:45-16:45 Future Action Plan

16:45-17:30 Closing Statements from Organizers

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