RDA/EOSC Future Grants for CoPs: IGAD in Republic of Moldova and South Caucasus Region
One of the project categories funded through the RDA/EOSC Future Open Calls is Communities of Practice. This news feature focuses on the work done by two grantees (Viorica Lupu, vice-director at the Scientific Library of the Technical University of Moldova; Marina Razmadze, Deputy Director and Researcher at the Central Institute for Scientific and Technical Information).
To find out more about the RDA/EOSC Future Open Calls please visit the dedicated webpage.
About the Improving Global Agricultural Data Community of Practice (IGAD CoP)
Both of the projects referenced here work within the framework of the Improving Global Agricultural Data Community of Practice (IGAD CoP). The IGAD CoP, formerly called The Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD), came to life in Gothenburg (Göteborg, Sweden) in 2013 at the beginning of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and has since grown to include over 260 registered members, from across continents.
Formed in 2013, since its inception the Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) has grown in community strength to over 200 members, becoming one of the RDA’s most prominent Thematic Groups.
IGAD is a domain-oriented group working on all issues related to global agriculture data. It represents stakeholders in managing data for agricultural research and innovation, including producing, aggregating and consuming data.
Beyond this IGAD promotes good practices in research with regard data sharing policies, data management plans, and data interoperability, and it is a forum for sharing experience and providing visibility to research and work in agricultural data.
One of IGAD’s main roles is to serve as a platform that leads to the creation of domain-specific Working Groups. To date, five successful Working Groups (WGs) have been formed under IGAD, these are: Wheat Data Interoperability, Rice Data Interoperability, AgriSemantics, On-Farm Data Sharing and Capacity Development for Agricultural Data WGs. The groups play an active role at the RDA Plenaries.
The IGAD CoP is meeting at the RDA 20th Plenary on 23 March 2023, 12:30 - 14:00 UTC | 13:30 - 15:00 Swedish local time (Breakout 7). Read more about the IGAD session and Plenary 20.
Enhancing Awareness About Open Data In Food And Agriculture In The Republic Of Moldova. A project by Viorica Lupu, vice-director at the Scientific Library of the Technical University of Moldova.
The efforts for the agricultural research community of the Republic of Moldova to join the international movement of research data sharing will lead to the valorization of data and knowledge obtained by research communities in the Republic of Moldova, and will ensure the optimization of data flow in specific scientific disciplines. The main objectives of the project are regarding to studying and understanding the attitudes of researchers in agriculture on open research data, encouraging to make agricultural data FAIR and raising awareness among the agricultural community members in the Republic of Moldova about the activity of the Research Data Alliance and the practices of research data management.
The project is working towards its aims through in two ways: 1) a survey on the opinions and attitudes of researchers in agriculture in the Republic of Moldova related to the opening, sharing and exchange of research data in which130 people have participated, and 2) by organising an online event on research data management focusing on IGAD CoP and RDA recommendations, utilising the survey results to exanine how the IGAD CoP could support them in the context of RDA.
Connecting the agricultural community of the Republic of Moldova to the RDA will facilitate the development of relevant skills on research data management and will help to meet the evolving needs of the local scientific community by developing new innovative digital services. While aligning with EOSC and RDA policies and practices will open up new opportunities for interaction and collaboration with experts, will create new knowledge to promote an area of professional practice and will improve data sharing, exchange and interoperability. Read the full blog.
Expanding The IGAD CoP In South Caucasus Region – Georgia, Armenia And Azerbaijan. A project by Dr. Marina Razmadze, Deputy Director and Researcher at the Central Institute for Scientific and Technical Information – TECHINFORMI.
This project's aim is to increase the knowledge and expertise on the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD) Community of Practice (CoP) and EOSC in the South Caucasus Region This project with the support of the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information - TECHINFORMI, is planning on engaging experts and members of domain specific communities from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to share, better understand and develop more ambitious and advanced approaches for FAIR collaboration in the context of raising awareness and expanding the values of RDA and the EOSC movement.
To realise their plans, this project is working on an online event together with the IGAD co-chairs to present RDA, its vision and mission, how to get involved, how to benefit from the IGAD and the CoP that currently includes more than 150 organizations worldwide. This half day event scheduled for Spring 2023 will include stakeholders currently present in IGAD, and will present some lessons learnt on the implementation of RDA recommendations produced within IGAD and also in other Working Groups. Part of the event will be dedicated sessions where country specific case studies will be shared. Presentations will refer to the support of local institutions to maintain and continue access to international, open and FAIR data during the COVID-19 pandemic. These sessions will be an important step on the way of building a strong understanding of multi-cultural environment of the South Caucasus region and exchange cross-disciplinary open science and data to reach the ultimate goal of reinforcing access to data, access to services, interoperability and sustainability.
The outputs of this project will serve as an illustration of RDA in the context of what RDA/IGAD can do better in order to facilitate the integration of more organizations and individuals in the CoP. Read the full blog.