A report on how the CHAIN-REDS project worked with the African Populationa nd Health Research Centre (APHRC) to improve discoverability, impact and persistence.

1. Co-ordination & Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures
for Research and Education Data Sharing
CHAIN-REDS second review, Brussels, 11 September 2014
www.chain-project.eu
proj-office@chain-project.eu
Use Case n. 2 : “African Population and Health
Research Centre Data Infrastructure”
Bruce Becker (CSIR) for Ubuntunet Alliance
Co-funded by the European Commission
under its 7th Framework Programme

2. Outline
 General information on the Use Case
 Support activity performed
 Current achievements
 Future plan and remaining issues
 Conclusions
CHAIN-REDS second periodic 2 review, Brussels
11/09/2014

3. The African Population Health Research Centre -
http://www.aphrc.org
 “APHRC is a leading pan-African research institution
headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, that conducts high
quality policy-relevant research on population, health,
education, urbanization and related development
issues across Africa.”
 “Over the last decade, APHRC has contributed to a
better Africa through quality research, and results-based
strategic communications and policy engagement.”
 The regions involved: mostly Kenya but also 18 other
countries
3 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

4. APHRC and Open Data in Africa
● APHRC mandate : better societies and government
thorugh the use of quality data
● Donor and mission require that data is open, publicly
available and accountable
● #Data4Dev is a hot topic:
– African needs a data revolution -
http://aphrc.org/blog/you-say-you-want-a-data-revolution/
– And there is a plan :
http://www.cgdev.org/blog/delivering-data-revolution-sub-saharan-africa
4 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

5. #Data4Dev – challenges in Sub-
Saharan Africa
Reproducibility
Accessibility

6. APHRC and IHSN:
software and standards
● APHRC uses software from International
Household Survey Network (IHSN)
● IHSN produces software for various tasks
– http://www.ihsn.org/home/software
– Particularly microdata cataloguing tool
● Uses DDI Alliance metadata
– Very robust tool for full data lifecycle
– Somewhat different from other OpenAccess
federations, but interoperable
http://www.ihsn.org/home/
6 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

7. What can CHAIN-REDS do for
APHRC ?
● This is a novel area for the application of CHAIN-REDS
services !
● How do the CHAIN-REDS proposed solutions fit with the
APHRC and general African Open Data needs ?
– Standards and Interoperability
● What standards are being used by APHRC in their data documentation and data
repository ? Are these compatible with others ?
– Discoverability and Impact
● Can authors cite the data ? What should they cite ? Will the original authors be
credited ?
– Reproducibility
● Can we ensure data analysis is using reliable data products and derivatives ?
7 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

8. Summary of support activity
performed
 Support provided:
– Consultancy on the benefit of issueing persistent identifiers
– Access to EPIC PID issuer
– Reference implementation of PID issuer for existing data sets
 Much time was dedicated to understanding the context – very “messy” area
 Success :
– MoU signed with APHRC: “Promotion of standards to widen and simplify the access
to e-Infrastructures worldwide and federation of Big Data archives across continents”
– Standards and Interoperability:
● Ongoing technical investigation to determine feasibility of integrating IHSN with
Semantic Search Engine
– Availability (APHRC already have a microdata portal)
● http://aphrc.org/catalog/microdata/index.php/catalog
– Discoverability and Impact
● Include in CHAIN-REDS Knowledge Base, issue PIDs to data sets
8 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

9. Discoverability : Inclusion in the
CHAIN-REDS KB
9 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

10. Current achievements
 All data sets in
the APHRC
portal have been
issued PIDs
 The code has
been released
http://epic.grnet.gr/
10 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

11. Current achievements
11 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

12. Future plans and remaining issues
 Ongoing activities
 Ensure handover of the tool to APHRC
 Promote the usage of the service amongst health researchers
and open access activities
 Investigate integration with the semantic search engine.
 Understand interoperability between IHSN harvester, OAI-PMH
 Investigate whether the semantic search engine can consume
IHSN harvester data
12 CHAIN-REDS second periodic review, Brussels 11/09/2014

13. Conclusions
 Fruitful collaboration created, result of CHAIN-REDS presence in
Africa, support of Open Access and Open Science activies
 CHAIN-REDS provided support and a concrete demonstration of
a widely-used service in an area of high societal impact.
 Usage of PID's has been demonstrated and feasibility of using the
REST API of the PID consortium confirmed
 Propose investigation of whether semantic search engine can
interoperate with DDI
CHAIN-REDS second periodic 13 review, Brussels
11/09/2014

14. Co-ordination & Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures
for Research and Education Data Sharing
Thank you !
http://aaroc.github.io/chain-reds/AAROC-APHRC-PID/
www.chain-project.eu
proj-office@chain-project.eu
www.chain-project.eu
proj-office@chain-project.eu
Co-funded by the European Commission
under its 7th Framework Programme

15. Special Thanks
APHRC SSU
http://aphrc.org/our-work/research-programs/statistics-and-surveys-unit/
Donatien Beguy
Head (SSU)
http://aphrc.org/team/donatien-beguy/
Cheikh Faye
Senior Researcher (SSU)
http://aphrc.org/team/cheikh-mbacke-faye/
Paul Odero
IT manager (APHRC)
http://aphrc.org/team/paul-odero/