As part of the CIARD Movement, AIMS organized during Open Access Week 2012 a series of webinars on the theme Making Agricultural Research Information Publicly Available and Accessible. The event has been co-sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD).

In total 7 webinars took place from Tuesday, October 23 until Friday, October 26. Jean-Claude Guédon and Alma Swan focussed more in general respectively on the status of Open Access in the agricultural domain and Open Access policy developments. Wouter Gerritsma talked about value-added services for the Wageningen Institutional Repository and Enrica Porcari highlighted the experience of CGIAR. The event was closed by 3 webinars consisting each of 3 short presentations talking about respectively "Promotion of Open Access", "Search Engines for Open Access Web Resources" and "Digital Repository Development Use Cases".

Each webinar has been recorded and can now be played back!
For the link to the recording, go to the programme here down below.

Note that to open some of the recordings you have to download the Blackboard Collaborate application and need a Java version 1.5 or higher

Opening Access to Agriculture Research Products: The Experience of CGIAR
Enrica Porcari, CGIAR
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Rome time Convert to another time zone)
Language: English

Abstract: CGIAR is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for a food secure future. 15 Research Centers generate and disseminate knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development. Over the past years, major reforms have begun to transform the approach how CGIAR generates and disseminates this information. In March 2012, CGIAR agreed upon a common operational framework with a new vision entitled “Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets”, envisioning open and free access to all its research results and development activities. The presentation will first provide examples that reflect the baseline conditions within this framework and will then summarize the vision and principles and highlight five concrete collective actions to make this vision a reality within CGIAR.

From Tactical to strategic thinking: picking priorities in Open Access
Jean-Claude Guédon, University of Montréal
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English

Abstract: One of the more fruitful ways to think about the evolution of open access is to try thinking about the best possible moves for the movement over the short and medium term. In particular, how self-archiving should relate to open access publishing and which should come first. The answer will be nuanced and will deeply relate to the large variety of possible circumstances, as well as to the nature of the objectives being pursued. But the general lesson will be that perfection should never stand in the way of progress.

Open Access policy developments
Alma Swan, SPARC, Key Perspectives Ltd, Enabling Open Scholarship
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English

Abstract: Policy is crucial to the progress of Open Access and, happily, is also becoming a focus of intense activity. Numerous policies have been announced by research funders this year alone and others are planned. I will briefly cover some of those developments, particularly where they relate to agricultural research. As it becomes clearer from analysis of existing, older policies that some work well and some work less well, I will also align policy types with effectiveness in practice.

Value-added services for the Wageningen Institutional Repository (WaY)
Wouter Gerritsma, Wageningen UR Library
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English

Abstract: Like other institutional repositories the WaY repository gives access to Open Acces (OA) publications from the institution. But it also contains a complete record of the non-OA publications. This allows us to provide a number of additional value-added services. Publicaton lists for individuals and science groups can be generated automatically and publications can be made more visible in search engines and abstracting and indexing databases. But as a result of additional ongoing  effort to hamonize information about authors and their affiliations WaY can provide bibliometric measures (h-index, relative impact etc.) to inform research groups as a proxy of their scientific performance. Currently the baselines from Essential Science Indicators (ISI) are used, but other metrics wil be considered when other baselines become available.

Promotion of Open Access
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English

Results of the New AGRIS Vision 2007-2012: promoting Open Access to Research by Stefano Anibaldi, FAO of the United Nations, Italy

Open Access Repositories: Capacity Strengthening Programme for Africa (OA - IRCSP): Towards visibility, accessibility and usability of African intellectual output by Peter Hessels, Royal Tropical Institute - KIT, The Netherlands

Open Access India: Towards Making Agricultural Research Publicly Available and Accessible by Sridhar Gutam, Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture - CISH, India

Search Engines for Open Access Web Resources
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English (1 and 2) and Spanish (3)

BASE : a powerful search engine for open access documents by Friedrich Summann, Bielefeld University Library, Germany

OER Commons Green: Aggregating Best-in-Class Green Open Educational Resources by Madalina Ungur, Vassilis Protonotarios, Agro-Know Technologies, Greece

Utilizando catálogos de bibliotecas para compartir contenido a texto completo de calidad: la experiencia del SIDALC by Manuel Hidalgo, Alianza de Servicios de Información y Documentación Agropecuaria de las Américas - SIDALC, Costa Rica

Digital Repository Development Use Cases
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 pm Rome time (Convert to another time zone)
Language: English (1) and Spanish (2 and 3)

A KARI and KAINet Institutional Repository Development Case Study by Richard Kedemi, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, Kenya

Análisis de resultados y estrategias de mejora en repositorios de libre acceso: el caso de citaREA by Andrés Yubero, Ascensión Bolea y Marta Carracedo, Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón - CITA, Spain

Archive Scanning & Creative Commons en la producción editorial del IICA by Federico Sancho, Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura - IICA, Costa Rica

• Good internet connection.
• Use a headset (or at least headphones or an echo cancelling microphone) rather than speakers. This will eliminate potential echoing.
• All users need a Java version 1.5 or higher. On many PC`s the Java engine is updated automatically. If in doubt, go to Checking system requirements.
• Elluminate Live! - the web conferencing program used - runs best with Internet Explorer.
• For more information on how to do things on Elluminate Live! go to Elluminate Live! - First Time Users or take a look at the Participant's guide for Elluminate Live! version 10 (pdf). In general you can find on the website of Elluminate an extensive offer of training services.