Describes the four focus areas. Presented during the CODATA Summer School, 3-7 July 2017, Trieste, Italy.

1. African Open Science Platform
Presented by Ina Smith
17 July 2017, ICTP

2. Agenda
• Overview of the African Open Science
Platform (AOSP)
• Botswana Open Science Open Data
Policy Strategy – Joseph Mwelwa
• Data, Software and Library Carpentry for
Capacity Building – Bianca Petersen

3. Progress re Open Access in Africa
• Open Institutional Repositories
(Webometrics - 74)
• Open Educational Resources (E.g. UCT
OER)
• MOOCs (MOOC List)
• Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

4. • Open Monographs
• Open Conference Proceedings (E.g.
SUNConferences)
• Open Patents
• Open Source Software & Open Standards
(incl. instruments)
• Open Access & Open Science Policies
(ROARMAP)
• Open Science
• Research Data Management Planning (RDM)

5. Open Data Repositories (re3data - 16)

6. • OA2020 (2017)
• Dakar declaration on Open Science in Africa
(2016)
• Open Data in a Big Data World Accord (2015)
• Open Science for the 21st century A declaration
of ALL European Academies (2012)
• Salvador Declaration on Open Access Cape Town
Declaration (2010)
• Cape Town Open Education Declaration (2008)
• Kigali Declaration on the Development of an
Equitable Information Society in Africa

7. Why African Open Science/
Open Data?

12. “I have temporarily retracted the study thanks to the alert from
Pierre. The blog is not peer reviewed, it is intended for early release
of research that will later be sent for peer review.”
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2017/03/21/apc-comparison-2010-and-2016/

13. http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cdc-scientist-admits-destroyed-data-showed-
vaccines-caused-autism-children/#cZz6lzEjivPoTZ80.99

14. Intellectual Property
“In many African countries, intellectual
property protection is undeveloped,
ineffective, expensive and unenforced and
in some African countries there exists
uncertainty on protection of IP and the
threat of innovation being stolen away from
inventors.”
https://ipstrategy.com/2016/12/05/a-new-look-at-intellectual-property-
and-innovation-in-africa/

15. https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/202208-massive-flaw-in-old-
ster-kinekor-website-leaked-clients-private-data.html

17. Accord on Open Data in a
Big Data World
• Values of open data in
emerging scientific
culture of big data
• Need for an international
framework
• Proposes comprehensive
set of principles
• Provides framework &
plan for African data
science capacity
mobilization initiative
• Proposes African Platform
Call to Endorse

18. Open Science Defined
“Open Science is the practice of science in
such a way that others can collaborate and
contribute, where research data, lab notes
and other research processes are freely
available, under terms that enable reuse,
redistribution and reproduction of the
research and its underlying data and
methods.” - FOSTER Project, funded by the European
Commission

19. “Open Science moves beyond open access
research articles, towards encompassing
other research objects such as data,
software codes, protocols and workflows.
The intention is for people to use, re-use and
distribute content without legal,
technological or social restrictions. In some
cases, Open Science also entails the
opening up of the entire research process
from agenda-setting to the dissemination of
findings.” - Open and Collaborative Science in
Development Network project, funded by IDRC

20. Open Data, Open Science &
Research Lifecycle (Foster)

21. African Open Science
Examples

25. Sci-GaIA Open Science Platform

27. Value of an African Platform
• Collective view of Open Science activities
• Create awareness
• Showcase African research
• Contribute to global knowledgebase
• Increase return on investment (re-use)
• Identify lack of data/opportunities/gaps

28. • Identify needs e.g. skills development,
infrastructure, policy formulation, etc.
• Act as conduit for links with international
open data and open science programmes
and standards
• Cross-use data across disciplines/studies
• Establish relationships between data
• Manage Intellectual Property (IP)

29. • Make data more discoverable/visible
(metadata)
• Encourage collaboration between
scientific & private sectors, citizens
• Participate in collective problem-solving
• Allow verification of existing data, predict
trends
• Accelerate discovery – speed is everything
(e.g. outbreaks)
• Attract funders

30. About AOSP
• Funded by the National Research
Foundation (NRF) (SA Dept. of Science and
Technology)
• Directed by CODATA (ICSU)
• Managed by Academy of Science of
South Africa (ASSAf)
• Through ASSAf hosting ICSU Regional Office for
Africa (ICSU ROA)

31. About ICSU & CODATA
• ICSU: International Council for Science –
consists of 17 interdisciplinary bodies e.g.
CODATA
http://www.icsu.org/
• CODATA: Committee on Data for Science
and Technology
http://www.codata.org/
• Mission: Strengthen international science
for the benefit of society by promoting
improved scientific and technical data
management and use

32. About ASSAf
• Recognise scholarly achievement &
excellence
• Mobilise members in the service of society
• Conduct systematic & evidence-based
studies on issues of national importance
(ASSAf OA Repository)
• Promote the development of an indigenous
system of South African research
• Publish science-focused journals (SciELO SA)
• Training in Open Journal Systems (OJS)
• Criteria for high quality OA journals
• Ambassador for Directory of Open Access Journals
(DOAJ)

33. • Develop productive partnerships with
national, regional and international
organisations to building capacity within the
National System of Innovation (NSI)
• Create diversified sources of funding for
sustainable functioning and growth of a
national academy
• Communicate with relevant stakeholders
• Association of African Universities (AAU) DATAD-R
harvester of OA repositories
• Evaluation instrument – harvesting IRs adhering to
criteria for best practice (ISO 16363, Data Seal of
Approval etc.)

34. AOSP Governance
• Advisory Council (Chair: Prof Khotso Mokhele)
• Terms of Reference
• Technical Advisory Board
• Terms of Reference
• Platform Office (ASSAf) & ICSU/CODATA
Office
• CODATA Executive Director (Dr Simon Hodson)
• 2x Senior Project Managers (Ina Smith & Susan
Veldsman)
• Project plan
• Capacitate on network
• Reports to funder
• Workshops, meetings, presentations
• 1x Junior Project Officer (ASSAf)

35. Key Stakeholders
• Global Network of Science Academies
(IAP)
• International Council for Science (ICSU)
• Regional Office for Africa (ROA)
• Committee on Data for Science and
Technology (CODATA)
• World Data System (WDS)
• The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)
• Research Data Alliance (RDA)
• Association of African Universities (AAU)

36. • Network of African Science Academies
(NASAC)
• African Research Councils (incl. DIRISA,
funders)
• African Universities
• African Governments
• NRENs (Internet Service Providers for
Education)
• Other

37. 4 Focus Areas
AOSP
Policy
Infrastruct
ure
Capacity
Incentives

38. Policy Framework
• Uganda Draft Open Data Policy
• White Paper on Open Research in South
Africa
• National Research Foundation (NRF)
• White Paper on Open Research Data
Strategy in Botswana
• Kenya Open Science Policy
• OECD Principles & Guidelines for Access to
Research Data from Public Funding

39. Infrastructure Framework
• RDM, Repositories (cloud), Internet
Connectivity
• NRENs
• Centres for High Performance Computing
• SKA telescope: Explore five untold secrets
of the cosmos. These include how the very
first stars and galaxies formed just after the
Big Bang.

40. “Construction of the SKA is due to begin in 2018 and
finish sometime in the middle of the next decade. Data
acquisition will begin in 2020, requiring a level of
processing power and data management know-how
that outstretches current capabilities.
Astronomers estimate that the project will generate
35,000-DVDs-worth of data every second. This is
equivalent to “the whole world wide web every day,”
said Fanaroff.
The project is investing in machine learning and artificial
intelligence software tools to enable the data analysis. In
advance of construction of the vast telescope - which
will consist of some 250,000 radio antennas split between
sites in Australia and South Africa - SKA already employs
more than 400 engineers and technicians in
infrastructure, fibre optics and data collection.”
http://sciencebusiness.net/news/79927/Square-Kilometre-
Array-prepares-for-the-ultimate-big-data-challenge

41. Challenges re Infrastructure

44. Capacity Building Framework
• Research Data Management Planning:
ContentDM
• Repositories: Figshare, re3data, Zenodo, DSpace,
Dataverse
• Command Line Interpretation: UNIX Shell
• Software Development Platform: GitHub, Mercurial
• Data Organisation: Spreadsheets
• Data Cleaning: OpenRefine
• Data Management & Databases: SQL, Hadoop
• Data Analysis & Visualisation (incl. programming):
R, Python, ggplot2, MATLAB, R Markdown

45. Challenges re Capacity Building

47. Incentives Framework
• Mechanisms that acknowledge
publication of datasets and to promote
data sharing

48. Stimulate Dialogue

49. Actions & Deliverables Year 1
• AOSP Side Event to the SFSA 2016 - Launch
• AOSP Workshop AAU 2017 - Policy
• Madagascar Meeting & Workshop 2017 –
Policy & Capacity Building
• Botswana National Open Data Open
Science Forum 2017 - Policy
• UbuntunetConnect Ethiopian Workshops
2017 – Policy & Infrastructure
• Database & Networks – Surveys etc

50. Closing Remarks
• Collaborate & learn – strength in diversity
• Data the new “gold” – predict trends (Prof
Joseph Wafula)
• Trusted data managed in trusted way
• Exploit data for the benefit of society (Min
Naledi Pandor)
• Tell the African story, in an African way

51. Stay in Touch!
• ina@assaf.org.za
• Mailing list
• Facebook
• Twitter
Please add your email to the email list.
Thank you!