Global Forum on Agricultural Research's (GFAR) commitment to open access to agricultural research data and information has been captured in a recent news item.GFAR has been contributing to advocacy and promotion of openness to agricultural research outputs and has also been enabling open access to agricultural research data and its effective use.

"The opening of access to structured agricultural research data can open a vast potential of applications for agricultural & farm development as also entrepreneurship across the world".-GFAR

GFAR's approach and contribution

• GFAR is approaching the various AR4D stakeholders and actors in from public, private and civil society/community sectors advocating the development of appropriate frameworks, policies and strategies to implement more open access to research data related to agriculture, facilitating and supporting the development of standards, negotiating improved  data and information flows and contributing to developing appropriate capacities through collaboration and partnerships at global, regional and national levels.
• In April, GFAR as one of the founding partners of CIARD, a movement to make agricultural research information and knowledge publicly accessible to all, participated in the recent CIARD Consultation.
• GFAR organized and discussed with other participants at the IST-Africa 2013 meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in May issues and benefits of opening access to agricultural research data in the public domain
• GFAR also discussed at a workshop session organized in collaboration with various private sector actors during the European Federation of Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and Environment (EFITA-2013) at Turin in July community-public-private partnerships in opening access to agricultural data and information.

To learn more about GFAR's contribution to Openness to agricultural information click here.

The information in the post is derived from this news release.