By Biegon, A. Kedemi, Maina, P and Wanyama, H at the Forum on Open Data and Open Science in Agriculture on 15th June 2015

1. Open Research Data – the KALRO
experience
Biegon, A. Kedemi, Maina, P and Wanyama, H
By

2. Comment…
• Agricultural development is fundamentally a social process in which people
construct solutions to their problems, often by modifying both new
technologies and their own production systems to take advantage of new
opportunities offered by the technologies and information necessary to
solve their problems (OWN DATA)
• Information collection institutions (libraries, media houses, research
communities), are cultural institutions through which information is
acquired, organized and accessed by customers who do not or cannot
afford to purchase an extensive collection themselves, but who need
information.
• services of information professionals
• Manufacturing is an essential step in capturing value from ideas (Mike
Gregory, University of Cambridge, UK)

3. Facts
• The role of agricultural research is to improve productivity
impact which focuses on the efficiency in use of resouces and
livelihood impact which determines whether gains of increased
productivity benefits the mass of society (Government of
Kenya, 2010).
• Conduct research on natural phenomena and gain data that
can help us have reliable knowledge about it
• – Opportunities to share the data – ICT based – options to
share this data
• DATA

4. Problem
- Research data is scattered all over
- Baseline data on farmers is scarce
- Breakdown in communicating data among stakeholders in
research
- Policy and IPR regimes on data

5. Research data
• KALRO research on
• Crops
• Livestock
• Natural Resource management (water, soils, etc.)
• Collect data on weather
• Published and semi-published data

6. Enabling Environment
• IPR regime
• Policy on data
• Institutional culture on sharing data

7. Open Repositories For
Published/Semi Published Materials
• KALRO and KAINET repository – make public records truly public
• KAINet repository launched in 2009
 Provides online access to more than 18,000 records (
http://www.KAINet.or.ke),
 include grey literature held in agricultural institutions;
 Promotes open access among the KAINet institutions
.
 Provides linkages to other institutional sites such as KARI’s (
http://www.kalro.org) and the Ministry of Agriculture’s (
http://www.kilimo.or.ke).
 Digitization of soil maps

8. Challenges and opportunities
• Challenges
• Policy environment framework ( e.g IPR)
• Institutional change towards open data, open science and open access
• Capacity building (Scientist and IM/ICT)
• Additional ICT infrastructural support
• Opportunities
• KAINET platform ( already in place and in use)
• ICT tools – access and rights assignment
• Consortia
• Government initiative on Legal and policy frameworks ( the New
constitution 2010 (emphasize on the right to access to information, National
ICT policy, KALRO new IPR policy developed and adopted, creation of
information and knowledge management unit in the new organization
KALRO)
• ICT private cloud infrastructure and data centre - built on next generation
technology – eg archiving and control

9. Conclusion and recommendations
• Open access supports research and dissemination of findings reduce
the cost of research…
• Rights of the authors protection enables free flow of information and
data
• Study on institutional culture on sharing and strengthen the IPR
regimes to ensure continuous flow of data into and out of research
institutions

10. Conclusion and recommendations
• Open access supports research and dissemination of findings reduce
the cost of research…
• Rights of the authors protection enables free flow of information and
data
• Study on institutional culture on sharing and strengthen the IPR
regimes to ensure continuous flow of data into and out of research
institutions