Multi-actor platform to advocate for open data in Ghana on the way

Group photo after opening session.
Photo: Justin Chisenga

Participants at the Forum on Open Data, Open Science and Open Access in Agriculture in Ghana have agreed to establish a multi-actor platform to advocate for open data in the country.

Initial ground work on the platform, the Ghana Open Data Alliance, has been done by the National Information Technology Agency (NITA). The Forum provided NITA with an opportunity to bring on board several other stakeholders, including the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen (GNAFF), and Farm Radio International, among many others.

The participants also agreed that appropriate open data policy framework, capacity development in data management, and data sharing standards, are key to the success of open data and open science in agriculture in the country.

Presentations and discussions at the Forum highlighted key initiatives on open data and open access in the country, concerns and fears, and the challenges being faced. The presentations included the following:

• Open Data and Open Science in Agriculture: Global Trends and Major Initiatives – Mr. Justin Chisenga, Capacity Development Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.
• Building Capacities for Open Access and Visibility of African Scholarly Work - Experiences from AAU – Ms Nodumo Dhlamini, Director ICT Services & Knowledge Management, Association of African Universities (AAU), Accra.
• FARA and Open Data & Open Science in Agriculture - Mr. Dady Demby, Knowledge Management Officer, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Accra.
• Ghana Open Data in Agriculture  – Mr. Eric Akumiah, Project Manager, Ghana Open Data Initiative, National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Accra. 
• Open Access to Agricultural Research in Ghana - Dr. Joel Sam, Director, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – Institute for Scientific and Technological Information, Accra.
• Strengthening the Use of ICT for Agriculture, Rural Development and Wealth Creation - Mr. John Awuku Dziwornu, Vice President, Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen, Asutuare, Ghana. 
• Social Innovation and Open Data Nexus Critical for Smallholder Empowerment - Mr. Worlali Senyo, Director of Growth, R & D, Farmerline Ltd, Kumasi.

Speaking at the opening session, Dr Victor Kwame Agyeman, Director-General of the country’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), indicated that the CSIR was committed to open access and would soon implement an open access policy to improve access to its research.

In is opening address, Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Food and Agriculture

Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, FAO Representative
to Ghana.  Photo: Justin Chisenga

Organization Representative to Ghana, emphasized the need for governments to put in place enabling environments favourable to open data sharing, and regulations to enforce common standards for collecting, producing, sharing and using open data to ensure that new data is safely and ethically transformed into public goods.

Participants at the forum came from the following institutions, among others:

• National Information Technology Agency
• Ministry of Food and Agriculture
• Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen
• Farm Radio International
• Association of African Universities
• Forum for Agriculture Research in Africa
• University of Ghana College for Basic and Applied Sciences
• CSIR Food Research Institute
• CSIR Water Research Institute
• CSIR Institute for Scientific and Technological Information
• CSIR Science and Technology Policy Research Institute

What remains now is for the participants at the meeting to take the initiative and and establish the platform as soon as possible.

You want your Open Access initiative to succeed? Partner with research funders

This month I moderated a very informative webinar on Encouraging Openness and how stakeholder policies can support or block it, organized by CIARD (Open Agricultural Knowledge for Development) and delivered by Bill Hubbard, Director of the Centre for Research Communications (CRC) at the University of Nottingham.

During the webinar, Bill mentioned two points that gave me food for thought. These are that simple policies to encourage Open Access (OA) do not seem to work (unless where they are mandated with sanctions); and that research funders are key to encouraging OA.

Opening access to agricultural research information in Africa is a big issue. Please, note my use of the term opening access as opposed to Open Access. This is because from my experience a good number of researchers, especially in public research organizations in Africa, appear not to be too keen with the idea of Open Access as in free and unrestricted online availability to the content they generate. They of the view that they cannot just give away for free their research outputs, a factor that has contributed to slow progress on OA initiatives on the continent. Therefore, I am of the view that for a start opening access, as in ensuring that research output is properly documented and is made visible to enhance identification and access without any restrictions if the organization or researcher decides to so, is more appropriate in such an environment. After all, in the long run it will lead to OA. Placing too much emphasis on free and unrestricted online availability of research frightens a good number of people.

Since 2006, I have been working on initiatives that encourage opening access to agricultural research information in Africa. I have supported projects in this area in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, and provided technical support and policy advice to several other countries. The focus of the initiatives has been on working with key institutions involved in the generation, processing and dissemination of agricultural knowledge, placing emphasis on developing their technical and functional capacities and ensuring that the enabling policy environment in place. Depending on the initial assessment of the institutional readiness, support has included providing appropriate ICT (i.e. computer servers, workstations, scanners, connectivity, etc.); training staff in digital information management, developing digital institutional repositories,  and using content management systems; and developing copyright guidelines, and information management and communication (ICM) policies and strategies that encourage opening access to content.

Out of 16 institutions that I worked with in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, only the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) is doing well and has its institutional repository listed in OpenDOAR. What has happened to the other 15 institutions?

Bill is right when he says that simple policies to encourage Open Access (AO) do not seem to work, unless they are mandated with sanctions. Six of the institutions that I worked with information policies and strategies that incorporated OA, and these were endorsed by senior management. To date, the number of full-text documents in some of institutional repositories is almost the same as it was at the end of the projects. Not that many resources have been added because researchers are not depositing their works, and no one is sanctioned.

For a long time, even before the arrival of OA on the scene, most agricultural research organizations in Africa have had policies in place that required staff to deposit copies of their publications with the library or documentation centre. In most organizations these policies have rarely worked largely because no staff are sanctioned for not depositing their publications. Most researchers do not feel compelled to deposit their publications in the institutional repository to facilitate opening access to their works.

I also agree with Bill that research funders are key to the success of Open Access (or opening access) initiatives. Agricultural research in public research organizations in Africa is largely funded by external donors. Imagine what would happen if they all included Open Access to outputs of the research they fund in the conditions for financing research projects?

Your guess is as good as mine. Institutional OA policy or no policy, research output will be available for Open Access if the funders for research demands so.

I guess now I have ideas on how to approach my next OA initiatives.

Providing access to digital content from Africa discussed at CODIST-III

Gracian Chimwaza (ITOCA) and
Justin Chisenga (FAO) at CODIST-III

Over the past four days, I have been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia participating in the Third Session of the Committee on Development Information, Science and Technology (CODIST-III). CODIST is one of the seven subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) composed of senior officials and experts from member States who meet on a biennial basis. The theme for CODIST-III was Measuring Innovation in Africa.

On 12 March, I took part in the pre-CODIST-III roundtable of the Knowledge and Library Information Services (KLIS) sub-Committee. The theme for the round table was “Innovations promoting information access and diffusion in Africa: best practices, challenges and the way forward”. Discussions mainly focused on initiatives that are working towards opening access to digital content generated in Africa. These included development of institutional repositories in African universities, the Access to Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA), the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD), Uganda’s implementation of the World Digital Library initiative, and the impact of social media in libraries. Following the discussions, the participants at the round table noted, among others:

• The absence of necessary technical, legal and governance frameworks to support adoption of Open Access model and other emerging technologies that would enhance access to the continent’s digital content;
• Proliferation of initiatives aimed at creating digital repositories. These are mainly externally supported/funded and in most cases, there is duplication of efforts.
• The need for coherence in information management and dissemination initiatives existing in Africa;
• Inadequate and/or limited capacity in many countries to manage digital information assets to support innovation for national development.

A key recommendation that came out of the round table is that UNECA should provide a forum for development partners, international organizations and member states to deliberate on the integration of their initiatives to avoid duplication and to leverage on the sharing of resources.

ZARI Researchers Attend Seminar on Opening Access to Research Outputs

Lusaka, Zambia - Research scientists and research officers at the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI) took part in a seminar on “Opening Access to Science and Technology Research”. The seminar which focused on agricultural research, was organized by ZARI Seminars Organizing Committee and the Zambia Agricultural Research for Development Information Network (ZAR4DIN), and covered:

Mr. Davy Simumba from ZARI presenting on ZAR4DIN

• Open Access (OA) Definition of Concepts/Terms
• Constraints to Agriculture Research Impact
• Benefits of Adopting OA Approaches
• Open Access Strategies
• Open Access Initiatives - Examples
• CIARD Initiative
• How to Promote Open Access

The seminar also looked at the ZAR4DIN project activities at the national level and within ZARI.  At the end of the seminar, the general consensus among the scientists was that ZARI should work towards enhancing the visibility of its research outputs.

The seminar was held at Mt. Makulu Research Station in Chilanga.

Information Experts Recommend Open Access and Web 2.0

Information Experts at the Workshop

More than 80 information experts who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 2 to 4 May 2011, have called upon librarians in Africa to integrate Web 2.0 applications into their work to enhance provision of innovative information services and the engagement with their communities; to discuss Open Accesss initiatives on the continent; and to create awareness on the benefits and importance of Open Access in order to have buy-in from the senior management and create confidence in faculty, academia, researchers, students and community to disseminate their research and scholarly works using the Open Access model.

During the three-day workshop on the theme “Promoting Innovation Development and Diffusion in Africa through Open Access Publishing" which was held at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the information experts discussed, among other themes, open access publishing in Africa, capacity building initiatives and partnerships to promote local content development in Africa, policy and technical issues, and new trends in information management.

The experts also recommended to the ECA to spearhead, with assistance from member states, the development of an action framework to facilitate the adoption of Open Access model in member states in Africa; and called upon the Governments in Africa to invest in information for development, and to develop information policies that should incorporate management and dissemination of content in digital formats.

UNECA Launches Institutional Repository



Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director, ISTD
launching the ECA Institutional Repository

Access to digital socio-economic development information in Africa received a boost with the launch of the ECA Institutional Repository by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 2 May 2011, during a workshop on Open Access. The ECA Institutional Repository will provide free access to publications, including journal articles, conference proceedings and working papers as well as technical, mission and annual reports produced by UNECA since its establishment in 1958.

Launch of the ECA Repository

Speaking at the launch of the repository, Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director of the ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD), indicated that the need to ensure a free flow of scientific information should be pursued by all member states with vigour. Ms Opoku-Mensah also informed the people present at the launch that the ECA Library was collaborating with the Science and Technology Section of ISTD to develop the Access to Scientific Knowledge in Africa (ASKIA), a programme that will facilitate a one stop centre to scientific and associated information available on the Internet.