Dear Colleagues !  We are looking forward to seeing you in Berlin or remotely !

This year IGAD-RDA Pre-meeting will focus on the implementation of the FAIR principles according to a three-step program:

IGAD-RDA Pre-meeting in details : 

19 MARCH 2018 

will be dedicated to the theme “The FAIR principles to all elements of the research process in agricultural sciences and related disciplines” with a keynote FAIR: Establishing of a social and technological infrastructure for data discovery and reuse by Dr. Michel Dumontier (Distinguished Professor of Data Science at the Maastricht University, Netherlands) and a series of presentations dedicated to the FAIR principles in relation to Institutional Use Cases, Semantics and Data Models and Implementation in Research Infrastructures.

20 MARCH 2018 

will be dedicated to the working groups associated to IGAD, as follows:

1. Agrisemantics Working Group
2. On-Farm Data Sharing Working Group
3. Metrics and Indicators in Agricultural Sciences BoF
4. Capacity Development Working Group
5. Wheat and Rice Data Interoperability Working Groups

You can find more details about the meeting at the Agenda and also information about How to get to the venue.

21 MARCH 2018 :

From 16:30 to 18:00, IGAD will deliver a breakout session during the RDA P11 Plenary, to report about the results of the IGAD/RDA Pre-Meeting. After a short report of the WGs, IGAD has organized a panel session on FAIR principles to all elements of the research process in agricultural sciences and related disciplines with the following panellists: 

• Medha Devare (CGIAR, France), 
• Paul Kasoma (Youths in Technology and Development Uganda), 
• Cynthia Parr (National Agricultural Library, United States), 
• Ashok K. Patra (Indian Institute of Soil Science, India) and 
• Leanne Wiseman (Griffith University, Australia). 

You will find more detailed information at Agenda.

From 16:30 to 18:00 (at the same time!), IGAD has been invited to participate at the panel session on BoF Connecting the pieces: coordinating communities and combining recommendations to explore the experiences, lessons learned, and future plans of four groups within RDA working to coordinate interdisciplinary work and combine multiple RDA Recommendations into working systems and functional infrastructure.

This as a contribution to larger strategic discussions about how RDA can fully scale and truly create a global data infrastructure.The four groups involved in this session are as follows:

1.) Agriculture IG (IGAD),

2.) A new Earth and space sciences-oriented adoption project led by the American Geophysical Union, which is working to implement multiple RDA (and related) recommendations across publishers, repositories, and infrastructure providers to improve scholarly communication. This involves multiple RDA groups, but especially the data publishing and related IGs.

3.) the “Cross-Continental Collection Access & Management Pilot (C2CAMP)” is an international consortium of scientific data communities working together to build a pilot global Digital Object virtualization layer that brings together core RDA components and processes related to the Data Fabric IG and

4.) the Disciplinary Collaboration Framework IG is trying to coordinate disciplinary activity within RDA and articulate a clear and consistent narrative on how they expect cross-cutting RDA groups to prioritize their work.

You will find more information at BoF Connecting the pieces: coordinating communities and combining recommendations.

22 MARCH 2018 :

From 11:00 to 12:30, the WG Agricsemantics has organized a working session on Agrisemantics: Towards Recommendations for the Future of Agriculture e-Infrastructures. The objectives of the meeting are to present and discuss analysis of use cases and requirements for final output of group and to plan final phase of group activity. Just as a reminder the RDA Agrisemantics WG aims at serving as a community-driven initiative to advance on a shared view on the role of semantics for data sharing and interoperability, especially for data related to agriculture. 

You will find more information at WG Agrisemantics

From 15:30 to 17:00, IGAD has organized a session with the GODAN Action Project on Supporting effective engagement with research & open data in the agriculture and nutrition. Lessons from IGAD & GODAN Action. Two short presentations dedicated to the experiences in the context of RDA/IGAD and GODAN Action, will be followed by a panel session composed by:

• Suchit Anand, Global OPen Data iN Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), 
• Chipo Msengezi, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA),
• Alan Stanley (Institute of Development Studies, IDS) and
• Boniface O Akuku (Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization).

You will find more information at Supporting effective engagement with research & open data in the agriculture and nutrition. Lessons from IGAD & GODAN Action.

23 MARCH 2018 :

From 11:00 to 12:30, IGAD has organized a Joint meeting with :

• IG Agricultural Data (IGAD),
• IG Data Discovery Paradigms,
• IG ELIXIR Bridging Force,
• WG FAIRsharing Registry,
• IG Repository Platforms for Research Data 

​on implementing the FAIR Principles in the agricultural domain (Remote Access Instructions). The aim of this joint session is to discuss practical questions such as:

• What does it mean to make data FAIR?
• What tools and methods?
• What incentives?
• Success stories?
• What have other IG/WGs produced to date that address FAIR?

You will find more information at Joint meeting: IG Agricultural Data (IGAD), IG Data Discovery Paradigms, IG ELIXIR Bridging Force, WG BioSharing Registry, IG Repository Platforms for Research Data

We hope that you will enjoy the discussion in all these sessions! Your feedback will be important!

Related: 

GO FAIR: a bottom-up international approach for the practical implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as part of a global Internet of FAIR Data & Services
Implementation Roadmap for the European Open Science Cloud, EC STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT, Brussels, 14.3.201