African Open Science Platform: Pilot Phase

Dr Simon Hodson

Executive Director, CODATA

www.codata.org

African Open Science Platform Side Event, SFSACSIR ICC, Pretoria7 December 2016

CODATA: Committee on Data for Science and Technology

“Strengthen international science for the benefit of society

ICSU’s Mission CODATA’s Mission

by promoting improved scientific and technical data management and use.”

CODATAPrinciples, Policies and Practice

Capacity Building

Frontiers of Data Science

IDW 2016, 11-17 Sept, Denver, CO.

Data Science Journal

The Case for Open Datain a Big Data World

• Science International Accord on Open Data in a Big Data World: http://www.science-international.org/

• Presents a powerful case that the profound transformations mean that data should be:

• Open by default

• Intelligently open or FAIR Data

• Supported by four major international science organisations.

• Lays out a framework of principles, responsibilities and enabling practices for how the vision of Open Data in a Big Data World can be achieved.

• Campaign for endorsements: over 100 organisations so far.

• IUCr Position Paper: http://www.iucr.org/iucr/open-data

African Open Science Platform

Builds on the principles, responsibilities and enabling practices laid out in the Accord.

Ambitious and far reaching initiative to encourage the development of national science ecosystems that are equipped for open science.

Conceived as a broad African initiative.

Funding for a pilot phase from DST South Africa and NRF, directed towards engagement with other African countries.

Delivery by ASSAf with direction provided by CODATA International.

High level Advisory Council, Technical Advisory Board

1) encourage open data fora for development of strategies and policies; 2) review incentives and disincentives and make recommendations; 3) roll out research data training activities; 4) undertake a research data infrastructure roadmap exercise.

Building the Initiative

Establish African Open Data Forum / Platform

Funded Research Data Infrastructure Initiatives

Funded, co-designed transdisciplinary researchprojects

Co-design African Open Data Policies

Develop Incentives Frameworks

Develop Research Data Science Training

African Research Data Infrastructure Roadmap

Activities requirelow funding for coordination, secondment,

contributions in kind and evaluation.

Activities requirehigher investmentfor coordination,

co-designimplemenatationand evaluation.

African Open Science PlatformScoping Workshop

Developing a landscape study: what are the key data initiatives, national and regional

Landscape survey: http://bit.ly/African_Data_Initiatives_Survey

Policy Development: what policy frameworks are required to help take advantage of the data revolution and Open Data?

Incentives: what are the benefits of Open Data for African research institutions? For researchers and research groups? What are the disincentives for data sharing? How can these be mitigated?

Data Skills and Training: what are the foundational data skills we need to develop? How can data training be achieved at scale? Can we use the approaches of Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry and the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science? What other initiatives can we learn from?

Data Infrastructure Roadmap: what are the priorities in terms of infrastructure? How can we ensure data infrastructure benefits African researchers and research institutions? How can we build on existing work in South African and SADC?

African Open Science PlatformBotswana

Have already very strong engagement with Botswana. Provides one example of how the pilot may develop.

Meetings arranged by Joint Minds Consult with key Botswana research institutes.

Workshops and discussions on research priorities, the data revolution and the benefits of open science.

Expertise in data, development of open data platforms can benefit strategically important areas of research: vision of centres of excellence with strong emphasis on open data and open science.

With input from colleagues, Joint Minds have developed a White Paper to establish a National Data Forum and a process for Data Strategy and Data Policy.

Paper has been presented to the Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology.

National Data Forum in March or April?

African Open Science PlatformBuilding the Initiative

In discussions with Prof. Joseph Muliaro Wafula, CODATA ExComm, about high level steps in Kenya.

CODATA Task Group is planning a workshop in Madagascar in May.

What is the landscape of data initiatives and of institutions and organisations with which we can collaborate?

In which countries is there enthusiasm for this approach and appetite to engage with the initiative?

How can the initiative engage with existing activities and stakeholders?

Feedback on the approach and structure of the initiative? Are these the right issues to address?

African Open Science PlatformGroup Work

Five presentations from experts involved with important initiatives.

Each relates to one of the proposed themes of the pilot project.

Five groups: chair and rapporteur.

Understanding the Landscape: Of what other initiatives should we be aware? Tell us about them http://bit.ly/African_Data_Initiatives_Survey

What are the key lessons from these initiatives?

How should the platform engage and collaborate with these initiatives?

Recommendations: for each group and theme (nation strategy forums, policies, incentives, training, roadmaps), please agree 5 recommendations for the pilot.

What are the key issues and challenges?

What do you want to achieve under these headings?

What are the most effective and realistic steps for the platform to take?

Simon HodsonExecutive Director CODATA

www.codata.orghttp://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.codata.org

Email: simon@codata.orgTwitter: @simonhodson99

Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59

CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, FRANCE

Thank you for your attention!

Credits for slides: inc. Geoffrey Boulton, Joseph Muliaro WafulaCredit for photos: Andjani Gatzweiler

Latin American and CaribbeanOpen Science Platform

Emerged from the Accord, from interest of the ICSU Regional Office for LAC to coordinate an Open Science initiative.

Discussions at launch of RO, concept note, exchanges of e-mails and a couple of virtual meetings.

Extended concept paper has been developed.

Working Group assembled, includes representatives of a number of key LAC science organisations, plus Belmont Forum and CODATA.

WG will meet in January in Panama to build on current documentation and write plan.

Will arrange a stakeholder meeting in April or so.

It is hoped that this will lead to a concrete funded initiative.

Opportunity for engagement and sharing ideas and for South – South cooperation.

Resources: Current Best Practice for Research Data Management Policies

Expert report commissioned by CODATA member.

Provides comprehensive summary of best practice in funder data policies.

Identifies key elements to be addressed:

1. Summary of policy drivers

2. Intelligent openness

3. Limits of openness

4. Definition of research data

5. Define data in scope

6. Criteria for selection

7. Summary of responsibilities

8. Infrastructure and costs

9. DMP requirements

10. Enabling discovery and reuse

11. Recognition and reward

12. Reporting requirements, compliance monitoring

Zenodo: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.27872

Implementation Guidelines for the Legal Interoperability of Research Data

Joint CODATA-RDA Interest Group on Legal Interoperability.

Builds on work done in the context of the GEO Data Sharing Working Group.

Set of principles to help ensure the fewest possible legal barriers relating to IP to sharing research data.

Implementation guidelines offer high level guidance on steps to take to reduce legal barriers to data reuse.

Result of lengthy consideration by the IG and two strenuous rounds of peer review.

Final version of the guidelines:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.162241

1. Facilitate the lawful access to and reuse of research data.

2. Determine the rights to and responsibilities for the data.

3. Balance the legal interests.

4. State the rights transparently and clearly.

5. Promote the harmonization of rights in research data.

6. Provide proper attribution and credit for research data.

CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science

• Contemporary research – particularly when addressing the most significant, transdisciplinary research challenges –increasingly depends on a range of skills relating to data. These skills include the principles and practice of Open Science and research data management and curation, the development of a range of data platforms and infrastructures, the techniques of large scale analysis, statistics, visualisation and modellingtechniques, software development and data annotation. The ensemble of these skills, relating to data in research, can usefully be called ‘Research Data Science’.

Foundational Research

Data Science Curriculum

Seven components: open science, data management and curation; software carpentry; data carpentry; data infrastructures; statistics and machine learning; visualisation.

Builds on much existing courses to create something more than the sum of its parts:

Open Science – reflection on ethos and requirements of sharing/openness

Open Research Data – Basics of data management, DMPs, RDM life-cycle, data publishing, metadata and annotation

Software Carpentry – Introduction to programming in R, the Unix shell and Git (sharing software and data)

Data Carpentry – Introduction to SQL databases

Visualisation – Tools, Critical Analysis of Visualisation

Analysis – Statistics and Machine Learning (Clustering, supervised and unsupervised learning)

Computational Infrastructures – Introduction to cloud computing, launching a Virtual Machine on an IaaS cloud

CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science

First School of Research Data Science, 1-12 August 2016, ICTP, Trieste

Funding for students and tutors provided by ICTP, TWAS, CODATA, ACU, RDA Europe, GEO and GODAN.

Attended by 70 students from all around the world.

Plan

Create

Use

AppraisePublish

Discover

Reuse

Store

Annotate

Select

DiscardDescribe

Identify Hand Over?

Access

Supporting the Research Data Lifecycle