Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), 8 October 2012


EFITA newsletter / 579 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


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The archives of this newsletter
See: http://www.informatique-agricole.org/category/gazette-efita/


SIAL 2012
21 – 26 October - PARIS
140,000 professional visitors from the food industry and 6,000 French and international exhibitors from 100 countries are expected in 2012.
See: http://www.sialparis.com/The-Exhibition/Discover-SIAL-2012


Webinar Programme "Open Access Week @ AIMS" online!
23 and 24 October
As part of the CIARD Movement [1], AIMS is organizing a series of webinars on the theme "Making Agricultural Research Information Publicly Available and Accessible" during Open Access Week 2012 [2]. The event is co-sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO [3]), the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR [4]), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA [5]) and the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD [6]).

>> A first version of the Webinar Programme is now available! [7]

>> Webinars by acknowledged Open Access specialists
We are glad to announce that we will start the event with four webinars by acknowledged Open Access specialists. On Tuesday, October 23, Enrica Porcari of CGIAR [8] and Jean-Claude Guédon of the University of Montréal [9] will respectively talk about the experience of CGIAR and the status of Open Access in the agricultural domain. On Wednesday, October 24, Alma Swan of SPARC [10] will focus on Open Access policy developments and Wouter Gerritsma of the Wageningen UR Library [11] will present the value-added services for the Wageningen Institutional Repository.

>> Webinars by the winners of AIMS' call for Open Access experiences
The event will be closed by the winners of the call [12] AIMS issued a month ago for experiences in the agricultural Open Access domain. Three webinars consisting each of three short presentations will focus on "Promotion of Open Access", "Search Engines for Open Access Web Resources" and "Digital Repository Development Use Cases".

>> More information?
For more information on the time schedule, how to join the webinars and system requirements please visit the Open Access Week @ AIMS programme [13]. Do not worry if you can't make it: the sessions will be recorded and you can play them back from the AIMS, CIARD and SIDALC [14] (Agricultural Information and Documentation Service of the Americas) portals.

[1] http://www.ciard.net/
[2] http://www.openaccessweek.org/
[3] http://www.fao.org/
[4] http://www.egfar.org/
[5] http://www.iica.int/Eng/Pages/default.aspx
[6] http://www.iaald.org/
[7] http://aims.fao.org/oa-week-2012
[8] http://www.cgiar.org/
[9] http://www.umontreal.ca/english/
[10] http://www.arl.org/sparc/
[11] http://library.wur.nl/
[12] http://aims.fao.org/news/open-access-week-2012-aims-call-presentations
[13] http://aims.fao.org/oa-week-2012
[14] http://www.sidalc.net/en


Opening Access to Agriculture Research Products: The Experience of CGIAR- Enrica Porcari, CGIAR [1]
CGIAR is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for a food secure future. Over 8,000 scientists and staff at 15 Research Centers generate and disseminate knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development. They collaborate closely with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. Their work is organized in 15 different CGIAR Research Programs that seek to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and ensure more sustainable management of natural resources.

>> CGIAR is envisioning open and free access to all its research results
Over the past years, major reforms within CGIAR have begun to transform the approach how CGIAR generates and disseminates knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development. In March 2012, a key milestone was achieved: CGIAR agreed upon a common operational framework with a new vision and principles on the management of intellectual assets.

In this framework, results of CGIAR research and development activities are regarded as international public goods. CGIAR is committed to widespread diffusion and use of its research products. To maximize impact and sharing of benefits, CGIAR is envisioning open and free access to all its research results and development activities, with more limited access or other restrictions becoming the exception only justifiable in well-defined circumstances.

>> Baseline conditions of common framework
Following an overview of the diversity of CGIAR research outputs and the special challenge represented by research data, the presentation will provide examples that reflect the baseline conditions: accessibility to publications and other knowledge within CGIAR Centers, level of openness of databases, researcher attitudes towards more open research processes and outputs, and progress made to define a set of principles to increase availability, accessibility, and applicability of data and knowledge.

>> Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets
The presentation will then summarize the vision and principles put forward in the new CGIAR “Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets” and highlight five concrete collective actions to make this vision a reality within CGIAR. The actions were proposed by representatives from CGIAR Research Programs and members of the CGIAR Consortium at a workshop in Montpellier in September 2012 including the following:
* prepare guidelines that translate vision and principles on intellectual assets into norms and standards;
* transition existing gene-banks and breeding efforts into open breeding platforms;
* establish the architecture for open spatial data;
* create an open knowledge commons;
* and build open research management systems.

These five actions represent the first building blocks of a comprehensive data and knowledge management strategy that seeks to ensure that CGIAR research data and knowledge will be more available, accessible and applicable in the future.

[1] http://www.cgiar.org/
[2] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html


Results of the New AGRIS Vision 2007-2012: advocating for Open Access to by Stefano Anibaldi
Since 1975, the AGRIS service has been aggregating and freely disseminating data coming from disperse institutions all over the world with the final objective to improve access to and the exchange of information and knowledge in agricultural science and technology [1] among developing Countries. 2007 was a crucial year for the newly envisioned AGRIS architecture: the firm belief that the AGRIS network was committed to improving access to full-text documents was made explicit by the increasing number of URLs linking to open access publications/./ At that time, this important metadata information started to be included, by the librarians and publishers of the AGRIS Network, in the description of the bibliographic reference, and the OAI-PMH, already widely used by several important Institutional Repositories and
Service providers (ScIELO and DOAJ in primis) were considered as a key means for the AGRIS data ingestion model.

A client harvester software was activated and information library systems such as AgriOcean Dspace [2] and AgriDrupal [3] were proposed, thus enabling institutional repositories and libraries to disseminate content, via the OAI-PMH paradigm, using common exchange standards. This has enormously facilitated the publication of metadata records with relevant URLs linking to the fulltext.

However, rather than software and data, AGRIS has been witnessing a growing awareness from publishers and repositories managers towards the Open Access model. Every month, the AGRIS Secretariat receives a huge amount of requests by publishers of OA journals that want to have their data indexed in the AGRIS database. This is also especially true since when the AGRIS data is indexed in Google Scholar (2008), with a web traffic boost of 80, 85%, which offers greatest visibility to the internet users but especially to the authors of the scientific articles.

>>> How to Join?
This presentation is part of a one hour session entitled "Promotion of Open Access" containing 3 short presentations that will take place on Thursday 25 October 2012 (11:00-12:00 pm Rome time). To join this session, visit the main page for the Open Acces Week @ AIMS webinars [4].

[1] http://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/ah766e/ah766e00.pdf
[2] http://aims.fao.org/agriocean-dspace
[3] http://aims.fao.org/tools/agridrupal
[4] http://aims.fao.org/oa-week-2012


The 3rd international conference on slow- and controlled-release and stabilized fertilizers: call for papers extended until 22 October
12 - 13 March 2013 - RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil
The 3rd International Conference on Slow- and Controlled-Release and Stabilized Fertilizers will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from the 12th – 13th of March, at the Royal Tulip Hotel. This event, brought to you in cooperation with IFA (International Fertilizer Industry Association), will be held immediately before the New Ag International Conference and Exhibition.
See: http://www.newaginternational.com/rioifa/2013ifabrochure.pdf


Offre & Demande Agricole lance la 1ère application Smartphone pour suivre les marchés des matières premières agricoles (gratuite et accessible pour Androïd et Iphone)
Voir : http://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/oda-info-france/id529761643?mt=8


If you missed the annual conference in Debrecen organized by HAAI, you will find a collection of presentations from the conference
See: http://nodes.agr.unideb.hu/ai2012/presentation


Brussels Briefing Agricultural Policy on Long-Term Budget, stabilizing EU Food Market and impact of drought in US & Russia
See: http://www.vieuws.eu/issues/10-eu-agriculture/22-eu-experts-vieuws/426-brussels-briefing-agricultural-policy-on-long-term-budget-stabilizing-eu-food-market-and-impact-of-drought-in-us-russia/


Already mentioned but with new photo added
See: http://www.linseedrings.co.uk/photos.html


AAS: Aerial Imaging Versus Ground Imaging
See: http://www.advancedagsolutions.com/greenseeker.php


International Journal of Agricultural Management
See: http://www.ijagman.org/
Contact: Martyn WARREN
E-mail: mwarren(a)plymouth.ac.uk


Stop demonising palm oil: Palm oil: environmental curse or a blessing?
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/palm-oil-environmental-curse-or-a-blessing-1917161.html


You can live in Colorado where...

1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.

2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home, and so he stops at the day care center.

3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.

4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.

OR (see next week)


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