The African Open Science Platform

Geoffrey Boulton

International Council for Science (ICSU)

Committee on Data for Science & Technology (CODATA) & Edinburgh University

Open Science?

Open to Whom?

Open Data + Open Access Publishing

= Science talking to itself, but more efficiently

Learning talk with (not talk to) other societal stakeholders• Business• Policymakers• Diplomats/Governments• Communities• Citizens

To other

Scientists

With

Society

African Open Science Platform

A digital ecosystem to create:

• Capacities

• Policies, practices, services

• Shared cloud computing resources

• Software tools

• Analytic approaches

• Networking with the international community

for mutual support in best practice and innovation

• Interaction with societal stakeholders

The “Science International” Accord:

principles of open data(www.icsu.org/science-international)

Responsibilities1-2. Scientists

3. Research institutions & universities

4. Publishers

5. Funding agencies

6. Scholarly societies and academies

7. Libraries & repositories

8. Boundaries of openness

Enabling practices

9. Citation and provenance

10. Interoperability

11. Non-restrictive re-use

12. Linkability

The Open Data Iceberg

The Technical Challenge

The Consent Challenge

The Ecosystem Challenge

The Funding Challenge

The Support Challenge

The Skills Challenge

The Incentives Challenge

The Mindset Challenge

Processes &

Organisation

People

motivation and ethos. National/Regional Infrastructure

Technology

CODATACODATAII

SSUU

Establish African Open Data Forum / Platform

Funded Research Data Infrastructure Initiatives

Funded, co-designed transdisciplinary researchprojects

Co-design African Open Data Policies

Develop Incentives Frameworks

Develop Research Data Science Training

African Research Data Infrastructure Roadmap

Activities requirelow funding for coordination, secondment,

contributions in kind and evaluation.

Activities requirehigher investmentfor coordination,

co-designimplemenatationand evaluation.

African Open Science PlatformPilot Project Workpackages

AOSP Governance

Council(Priorities, policies and politics)

Khotso Mokhele (South Africa) - Chair

Advisor to the SA Minister for Science

Ismael Serageldin (Egypt)

Founding Director, Library of Alexandria

Ogunlade Davidson (Sierra Leone)

Former Minister for Electricity & Water

Heide Hackmann (ICSU)

Executive Director

Geoffrey Boulton (CODATA)

PresidentDr Susan Veldsman (ASSAf)Secretary

Technical Advisory Board(Technical requirements & solutions)

Prof. Muliaro Wafula (Kenya) – ChairAnwar Vahed (South Africa)Dr Audrey Masizana (Botswana)Mrs Nodumo Dhlamini (Ghana)Ms Andiswa Mlisa (Switzerland/SA)Prof Benjamin Aribisala (Nigeria)Dr Daniel Nyanganyura (Zimbabwe)Dr Joseph Mwelwa (Zambia)Dr Arona Diedhiou (Côte d’Ivoire) Ms N. A. Lucie (Madagascar)Dr Susan Veldsman (ASSAf)Dr Simon Hodson (CODATA)

• Funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology,

ICSU and CODATA.

• Currently hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa.

National Forums

AOSP - Year 1

Activities

• Launch: Science Forum South Africa 2016 AOSP Workshop

• Policy Development - AAU 2017 (Ghana)

• Policy & Capacity Building - Madagascar Meeting & Workshop 2017 –

• Policy - Botswana National Open Data Open Science Forum 2017

• Policy & Infrastructure - UbuntunetConnect

• Database/Networks/Surveys etc - Ethiopian Workshops 2017

• Capacity Building – schools and workshops

Priorities

• Promoting the concept

• Building the network• Developing policies

Principal Active Communities

Background for Policy & Action priorities

Landscape mapping 1

Progress on Openness in Africa

• Open Institutional Research Repositories (Webometrics - 74)

• Open Educational Resources (E.g. UCT OER)

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

• Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (11 SA universities hosting their own)

• Open Monographs

• Open Conference Proceedings (E.g. SUNConferences)

• Open Patents

• Open Source Software & Open Standards

• Open Access & Open Science Policies (ROARMAP)

• Research Data Management Planning (RDM)

• Data sets & accompanying data instruments

• 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

Landscape mapping 2

African Support for Open Science

Landscape mapping 3

Policy Framework

• JKUT (Kenya) Institutional Open Science Policy

• Uganda Draft Open Data Policy

• Madagascar Draft Open Data Policy

• White Paper on Open Research Data Strategy in Botswana

• White Paper on Open Research in South Africa

• Funder Policy: National Research Foundation (NRF)(SA)

• OECD Principles & Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding

Hard NRENs – Level 6 Elaborated Service Offering

An NREN Capability Maturity Model – Duncan Greaves (2015, Tertiary Education

Network)

• Richly connected at high speed to many other networks/resources

• Value added services e.g. grid & cloud computing resources, user controlled

light paths, videoconferencing, federated identity services, and more

• Deep culture of collaboration

Hard Infrastructure Framework

Landscape mapping 4

Capacity Building Framework

• Research Data Management Planning

• Repositories

• Command Line Interpretation

• Software Development

• Data Organisation

• Data Cleaning

• Data Management & Databases

• Data Analysis & Visualisation (incl. programming)

• Recognition, citation, promotion

• Mechanisms to acknowledge publication of datasets and promote

sharing

• Funder requirements

• Acknowledge & reward impact of data: citations, downloads, views

• Incentives for institutions

• Incentives for governments

Incentives framework

CODATACODATAII

SSUU

Capacity Building in Research Data Science - Short Courses

CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Science Short Courses: Address a recognised need: provide additional training in core data skills for PG and Early Career researchers, research support.

Be Scalable and Global: work with partners internationally, open materials, training new teachers to create a network of schools: annual hub at Trieste, feeds the skills to put on schools at institutions worldwide.

Provide a Pathway for Specialisation: introductory school in core data skills, then an advanced school or specialised school for specific disciplines.

Be Sustainable: developing a business model with colleagues at the Cologne Business School, based on hub and node model with distributed funding.

Accredited and Quality Course: working with EDISON and others to ensure that the course meets recognised objectives and can be mapped to credit systems.

http://www.codata.org/working-groups/research-data-science-summer-schools

AOSP Series of Webinars on Incentives October 2017

• Roadmaps

• Intervention on policy and regulation to stimulate NREN formation

• Centres for High Performance Computing

• Collaboration:

E.g:

International Commission on Standards & Data Integration

Square Kilometre Array Partnership

Needs

European Commission

?

INTERNATIONAL DATA WEEK

IDW 2018

Gaborone, Botswana: 22–26 October 2018