AfricaRice
needs to continuously strive to increase the quality, usefulness and accessibility
of knowledge and technology that it produces with its partners for the benefit
of Africa’s rice sector.
Data
are central to this effort and everything that AfricaRice does revolves around
data as they are at the heart of every research institute. Data need to be
collected, analyzed and interpreted in the most efficient way, and stored for
others to use. Mountains of data, however, remain to be uploaded and
maintained in the Center’s data repositories.
Through
the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture (https://bigdata.cgiar.org/), AfricaRice
has allocated resources to help scientists who have historical data to get these
uploaded on the AfricaRice Dataverse data repository (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/AfricaRice).
Goal
To
have a least 100 datasets, data and metadata annotated, uploaded in Dataverse
repository by December 2018.
Mechanism
Reward
individuals for uploading qualified datasets in AfricaRice Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/AfricaRice).
Process
- AfricaRice scientists send their datasets to the Open Data Team using the template for survey or the template for experiment.
- The Open Data Team ensures that the data are in accordance with the CGIAR Core metadata schema standards and supports scientists in completing the template
- The Open Data Team uploads the datasets in Dataverse
Scientists
will be given:
- 3 points for any dataset generated from 2013 onwards and linked to a journal article
- 2.5 points for any dataset generated before 2013 and linked to a journal article
- 2 points for any dataset generated from 2013 onwards and linked to other types of publications
- 1.5 points for any dataset generated before 2013 and linked to other types of publications
- 1 point for any dataset generated from 2013 onwards and not linked directly to any publication.
- 0.5 point for any dataset generated before 2013 and not linked directly to any publication
In the case of multiple authors, each
receives the same points.
Scientists
who excel during the 2018 AfricaRice Open Data Competition will be invited to
attend the Big Data Convention in Nairobi https://bigdata.cgiar.org/nairobi-2018 (competition
open until end of September 2018), or the International Rice Congress http://ricecongress2018.irri.org/
(competition
open until end of September 2018) or any other important scientific conference
in 2018 (competition open until end of November 2018).
In addition to the ‘2018 Open Data Competition’ that will support
participation in scientific conferences, AfricaRice through the CGIAR Platform for
Big Data in Agriculture, has allocated funds to support open access
publications in 2018.
For more details on the ‘2018 AfricaRice Open Data Competition’ and the
‘support for open access publications’, please contact Dr Ibnou Dieng i.dieng@cgiar.org
