The International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) was founded in 2008 as an expansion and continuation of the former Danish Agricultural Research Centre for Organic Farming (DARCOF, founded 1995), which the Danish Government decided to provide with an international mandate and an international board.

The vision of ICROFS is that "the principles of organic agriculture have become a global reference for sustainability in agriculture and food systems due to evidence based on research and adaptive management.

ICROFS is a centre without walls, where the research is performed in interdisciplinary collaboration between research groups at different institutions and universities. The secretariat of ICROFS initiates, coordinates, and participates in national and international research activities in organic farming and food systems. It is also very active in disseminating organic research results and knowledge on the importance of organic food systems to the environment, nature and biodiversity, animal welfare, health, food safety and quality, economy, structural and market development as well as social significance. Moreover, the Centre promotes understanding of the characteristics of organic food systems and contributes to a knowledge-based development of organic food systems, nationally and internationally.

Organic Eprints offers Open Access

ICROFS hosts and administrates Organic Eprints, the eprints-based Open Source archive for publications and information materials in organic research, which was founded by DARCOF in 2002. The Organic Eprints archive is a tool to further develop research in organic agriculture.

The main objectives are to facilitate the communication of research papers, to improve the dissemination and impact of research findings, and to document the research effort. In accordance with these objectives the archive is designed to facilitate international use and cooperation. Here, researchers can deposit and share their information with colleagues, students and stakeholders worldwide.

As by early 2012, the archive has more than 12 000 entries deposited from more than 50 different countries and 17 500 registered users. There are more than 5 000 daily visits to the archive from countries all around the world. The archive includes not just refereed articles, books and reports but also grey literature – from conference papers and proceedings to articles in farmers’ newspapers – and information about research programmes, projects and organisations.

Anyone, anywhere in the world can access the material in the archive through search engines, and sign up as a registered user in order to deposit their own work. Before a document is uploaded, a national editor will check that the papers are relevant to the subject and that the bibliographic data is correct. The user makes a declaration that they have the right to deposit the work. Where there is a copyright restriction on the deposited document, the depositor can make restrictions on access and, in that case, an interested user can request a copy directly through the system. As well as accessing the material in the archive, users can save searches and receive a weekly or monthly email notifying them of any new deposits made within that search area.

The archive has 23 national editors. Most of these are in Europe but Australia, Canada and Brazil are also represented. In addition, FiBL Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland, and BÖLN Federal Organic Farming Scheme and other forms of sustainable agriculture, Germany, are partners and contribute to management and updating of the system.

Access to the whole range of material in Organic Eprints is especially valuable to those working in developing countries, where free access to expensive scientific publications may be rare. But even in Europe and North America where there is usually access to this type of publications, researchers state that they think one really good thing about Organic Eprints is that they can get all the grey literature because usually conference proceedings can be difficult to access.

The success of the archive can also be seen in its position in rankings of scientific and institutional repositories. In a ranking of 100 repositories in Europe, Organic Eprints comes in at number 14, and of the world’s more than 1 200 repositories, Organic Eprints is at number 36.

VOA3R

Organic Eprints – represented by ICROFS – participates in the VOA3R-project: Virtual Open Access Agriculture & Aquaculture Repository: Sharing Scientific and Scholarly Research related to Agriculture, Food, and Environment. Here, several subject and institutional repositories are contributing content to a common portal with search and browse facilities and augmented by a social network for the users. Through this collaboration, Organic Eprints aims to distribute the deposits to even more users. At the same time, participating in the project enhances the network and knowledge of the administration of Organic Eprints

OpenAIRE