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Open Access

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.


Monthly Spotlight

B10 Open Access Conference: Access to scientific knowledge for African countries

“Good science should have no boundaries” was the message of the Berlin 10 Open Access Conference hosted by Stellenbosch University (SU) in South Africa, closed yesterday. It was the first time this event was held in and focused on Africa. The theme ‘Networked scholarship in a networked world: Participation in Open Access’ addressed especially access to scientific knowledge for African countries. The speaches of keynote speakers Ms Máire Geoghegan-Quin and Prof Russel Botman are now available online. To follow the conference on Twitter, you can search for tweets by delegates using the official conference account #Berlin10SA

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Questions and Answers

What is the CIARD RING?

Group of Interest

With the objective to facilitate the sharing of news, case studies and ideas, the Open Access Group of Interest includes information management specialists that work on the promotion of the accessibility and visibility of different research outputs  in agriculture, such as documents, data, learning materials and other content types.