Society progress has always had knowledge sharing/exchange as a major element of facilitating knowledge integration and its translation into practice within and across different communities, including agriculture, agri-food and agro-biodiversity sector.

“Open knowledge is what open data becomes when it’s useful, usable and used - not just that some data is open and can be freely used, but that it is useful – accessible, understandable, meaningful, and able to help someone solve a real problem … With the latest research openly available, everyone has the potential to understand our world, and the knowledge they need to tackle major challenges such as poverty and climate change.”(Open Knowledge International).

The Open Knowledge in Agricultural Development (OKAD) channel - created (in 2015) under the umbrella of an open science publishing platform F1000Research - promotes free online access to and sharing of original research findings, initiatives, case studies, perspectives and opinions in the context of agriculture, agri-food and agro-biodiversity.

All findings (including null/negative results, small findings, case reports, posters, slides, data notes and observation articles) - published on the F1000Research – benefit from fast and transparent peer review (that appears in less than two weeks) and are accompanied by the source data (please see Data Guidelines).

The criteria for different article types are outlined in F1000Research article guidelines. F1000Research charges an article-processing charge (APC) for all articles. No charge is levied on posters and slides, which are free to both view and deposit. F1000 fully supports the HINARI/AGORA Access to Research in Health Programme; for articles presenting original research a full waiver is given to authors from HINARI group A countries, and a 50% discount to authors from HINARY group B. F1000Research will also consider individual full or partial waiver requests on a case-by-case basis in situations where there is a lack of funds.

F1000Research items - published (under a CC BY license) and eventually updated - are fully citable and indexed in bibliographic databases, thus increasing their visibility and enabling early feedback (in form of open discussion/comments) from the scientific community.

OKAD is open for submissions on a range of topics related to agricultural development including, but not limited to:

• E-infrastructure for agricultural development

• Publishing and communicating scientific knowledge

• Open access, open data and open educational resources

• Dissemination, metrics and impact assessment

• Development of open source software, applications and platforms

• Policy and socio-economic issues

• Non-digital Open Knowledge initiatives

Learn more: OKAD & F1000Research: a very different approach to publishing agricultural research (AIMS@Webinar)

Contact F1000Research