AIMS supports Open Access focusing on the promotion of methodologies and good practices to enhance the accessibility and visibility of research data in agriculture and related sciences on the Web.

AIMS facilitates efficient dissemination and easier access to research outputs through the following key ways:

• promoting good practices by facilitating networking through the AIMS communities of practice;
• recommending the use of appropriate metadata standards for the creation, management and exchange of meaningful bibliographic information;
• publishing and maintaining subject vocabularies; and
• customizing tools to use recommended metadata and subject vocabularies

Within the CIARD initiative AIMS becomes a reference point for the above four elements.