SMEs using research e-infrastructures

By Andreas in Events, News, Projects, Research 0 Comment

Following up on the article published few days ago on “Data infrastructures in the service of the agricultural community” I wanted to come back to this issue looking this time from a different perspective, the one of an SME using a research e-infrastructure.

I was trigged for this article through Agro-Know’s participation in the “European Research e-Infrastructures and Innovation Clusters” workshop that actually takes place today (3rd of October, 2014) in Brussels.The workshop aims to “explore the collaboration opportunities between European Innovation clusters and European research e-infrastructure providers to facilitate access to and use of research e-infrastructures by SMEs“.… Click to read the full post

Data infrastructures in the service of the agricultural community

By Andreas in Funding opportunities, Personal views, Research 1 Comment
Horizon2020

On the 2nd of September 2014, it was the first major deadline of the European Research Infrastructures of the H2020. Following up on the previous and current work of Agro-Know in data infrastructures, we participated in a number of different project proposals, trying to exploit the different activities to continue on building infrastructure services for the agricultural community, partnering with major research organisations like the EGI, APARSEN and ATHENA R.C. Some of these proposals are EGI-ENGAGE, DPInfra and OpenMinTed – we hope that we’ll soon be able to present them in more details.

 

Horizon2020

 

But why communities as the agricultural, the food safety or the biodiversity are interested in such projects and what do they have to earn?… Click to read the full post

Public Consultation on ‘Science 2.0’: Science in Transition

By Nikos Manolis in News, Projects, Research 4 Comments
openscience

The European Commission Public Consultation on “Science 2.0: Science in transition” is run jointly by DG Research & Innovation and DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology and its goal is to better understand the full potential of ‘Science 2.0’ as well the desirability of any possible policy action. The Commission is inviting residents of Europe, organization and public authorities to read the paper and send in their contributions before September 30th, 2014.

The three main objectives of the consultation are:

  1. to assess the degree of awareness amongst the stakeholders of the changing modus operandi,
  2. to assess the perception of the opportunities and challenges, and
  3. to identify possible policy implementations and actions to strengthen the competitiveness of the European science and research system by enabling it to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by Science 2.0.
… Click to read the full post

Hosting the Global Water Pathogen Project meeting

By Andreas in Events, Projects, Research 0 Comment
IMG_0606

One of our core values in AK, is Mother Earth Inspiration. There is no other project that reflects so much on this value than the new Global Water Pathogen Project, partially funded by UNESCO, that looks on aspects of wastewater management (pathogens, virus, etc.).

The project aims at authoring a second version of the “Sanitation and disease : health aspects of excreta and wastewater management” Feachem et. al. 1983 book, a reference book for all researchers working on wastewater management, with the new version of the book involving more than 100 authors from different disciplines around the world.

Agro-Know, as an expert in managing biodiversity data and transforming data into meaningful knowledge, collaborates with the GWPP for the creation of an online hub that will capture and visualise all related information, creating not only an online version for the Feachem 2.0 book but a point of reference for all stakeholders.… Click to read the full post

Open data on what people eat?

By Nikos Manouselis in Personal views, Research 1 Comment
An example of an indicator: % of households in a country consuming iodised salt. Not much data there...

I received an interesting question from some good colleagues in the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative: can we have access to data about what people eat? The question originally focused on whether there exists a central database and/or very large dataset (including multiple years/countries) capturing what people eat.  This means not just caloric consumption per person, but what they actually consume.  For example – today I have consumed a small apple, half small melon, 5 pieces bacon. This got me into a little bit of thinking: do we have access to such data? And from what type of sources?… Click to read the full post

Food for thought: Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems Towards 2020

By Vassilis Protonotarios in Personal views, Research 0 Comment
Cover of the "Agricultural knowledge and innovation systems towards 2020" report

We recently came across a really interesting publication by the European Commission’s Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR), titled “Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems Towards 2020”. The publication is available through the EU Bookshop, which is always a valuable source of  policy documents and reports.

SCAR was established back in 1974 and is responsible for the coordination of agricultural research efforts across the European Research Area, including questions of advisory services, education, training and innovation. SCAR set up a Strategic Working Group (SWG) of civil servants from the European Commission and the EU Member States to reflect on the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) – you can find a really interesting publication on AKIS, titled “Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems in transition Findings of the SCAR Collaborative Working Group on AKIS” in the OECD iLibrary.… Click to read the full post

Can we help people create better metadata?

By Nikos Manouselis in Inside Agroknow, People, Research 0 Comment
Well, surviving a PhD is always giving a reason to be smiling. But for some more senior people, that seem to get what you could call "a divine blessing", other things matter in life...

It seems that one of the issues that has been around for several years in the library world, the one of cataloging items, is here to stay.

I remember ten years ago the provocative statement by Erik Duval: electronic forms must die! This is a slogan that we all liked, adopted and worked for. So, a decade later, did we manage to exterminate them? Not yet, I am afraid…

The famous slide by Erik: kill' em all

The famous slide by Erik: kill’ em all

Every time I hear about a new initiative that wants to help people organise their digital material in some kind of database, I know the type of question that will come next: it’s always a variation of “how can we explain to these people how they will describe (tag; annotate; index; catalogue; choose your verb) their materials so that they can manage and discover them in an easier way?”.… Click to read the full post

Towards a data-powered world: should we expect the agri-food sector to change?

By Nikos Manouselis in Personal views, Projects, Research 1 Comment
Guess who else was interested in the G-8 event...

There has been quite a discussion during the past few months on the way that the big data trend and evolution is going to change the sector that we work with. During 2013, our work that was very traditionally described as “agricultural knowledge management” and that sounded extremely uninteresting to several people, has suddenly become part of a hype. Some of the things that have served as catalysts include:

a) The decision that the G-8 Summit took in 2012, to commit to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, as the next phase of a shared commitment to achieving global food security.… Click to read the full post

My PhD in a nutshell

By Nikos Palavitsinis in Other, Research 1 Comment

This blog post is about a short flashback in my recent past! It has been five years already since I started my PhD adventure and some weeks ago I submitted the ready-to-print version to my primary PhD supervisor, Dr. Salvador Sanchez-Alonso of the University of Alcala de Henares!

I am pending my PhD defense which is on the way but nevertheless I wanted to use this time in between to share with you a short recount of my work during these four years. Starting on 2009, I started studying about metadata quality, both on the theoretical level of literature but also on the more practical level of applying quality assurance methods and techniques, on a repository of open content on organic agriculture and agroecology, called Organic.Edunet.… Click to read the full post