Accessibility and Availability of CIAT
Research Results
Progress Update
by peter ballantyne for ciat
CIAT KSW, Cali
21 May 2009

presentations

What and Who?
• 20+ blogposts • Alexander Zurita
• 9 video interviews (blips) • Andrea Carvajal
• 112 posters • Carlos Saa
• 30+ presentations • Edith Hesse
• Edwin Saavedra
• 100+ photos • Fernando Pino
• Gladys Rodriguez
• Idris Jones
• 800+ blog visits • Juan Jose Saba
• 350+ blip views • Maria Fernanda Mejia
• 1000+ slide views • Mariano Mejia
• 570+ photo views • Neil Palmer
• Olga Lucia Gonzalez
• Olive Wahura T’hiongo
• Simone Staiger-Rivas

AA Approach
• Consolidate available knowledge information
and data in CIAT, investing in various actions to
maximize the accessibility of our work.
• Extend this approach with our partners across
this region, and perhaps beyond, to help create
a Latin American ‘Agricultural Commons’ that
transforms the way knowledge is generated and
applied in the region.

Actions
1. Use ‘open’ as the default setting to share our research
outputs. Adopt a suitable ‘creative commons’ license.
2. Ensure that copyright agreements with publishers allow us to
retain CIAT rights to re-use the publications and for us to
deposit them in our open repositories.
3. Look at our agreements with partners, collaborators, funders
and others to ensure any outputs they generate are also
published and deposited under similar licenses.
4. ‘All of CIAT’ approach and strategy to guide information,
knowledge, data and communication policies.
5. Deposit all CIAT research outputs in publicly-accessible
repositories. Some of our internal repositories may need to be
reviewed and migrated outside our intranet.
6. Brush up our skills. Equip staff to become ‘smarter’
communicators and sharers throughout the research cycle.

Actions
1. Try out social media like blogs and video that can increase
our ‘social footprint’ – beyond words and text!
2. Support other innovative applications, such as geo-spatial
applications where we have a lot already to build on. There
may be other applications like mobile devices or participatory
video that are worth exploring.
3. Improve our web presence.
4. Develop specialized knowledge sharing platforms that
reinforce and give greater visibility to what we do.
5. Look at our personnel systems to provide incentives to such
activities that result in open and accessible, as well as high
quality, research.
6. Sufficient bandwidth and appropriate use of it

Task Force?
• Center-wide forum that brings the different
perspectives and expertise together.
• Set up a knowledge ‘task force’ to give us
impetus and guidance in the coming
months