Biotech Updates

CGIAR Consortium's Data Now Officially Open Access

December 4, 2013

The CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Policy, supported unanimously by all 15 members of the CGIAR Consortium, is now effective. The policy marks a ground-breaking effort to address Open Access publishing system-wide, committing CGIAR to making information products. This includes spatial, crop, and socio-economic and genomic datasets – open access over the next 5 years. CGIAR strongly believes that this clear commitment to open access will improve the efficiency, efficacy, and impact of its research; aid interdisciplinary research and novel computation of research literature; and allow the global public to further benefit from the wealth of CGIAR research.

To start moving this effort forward, the CGIAR Consortium is currently engaged in a Data Standards Summit. Participants from CGIAR, the Food and Agriculture Organization and other partner organizations are going to meet to work collaboratively for a practical roadmap on the adoption of Open Data Management Standards. The group will discuss the Draft CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Implementation Guidelines, and agree on metadata standards and vocabulary that can be applied to all data domains (broadly categorized as genomic, genetic, crop/breeding, spatial and socio-economic data).

For more information, see CGIAR's news release at http://www.cgiar.org/consortium-news/cgiar-consortium-now-officially-open-access/.