Presented by Simon Hodson during the African Open Science Platform Side Event for Science Forum South Africa, on 7 Dec. 2016

1. African Open Science Platform: Pilot Phase
Dr Simon Hodson
Executive Director, CODATA
www.codata.org
African Open Science Platform Side Event, SFSA
CSIR ICC, Pretoria
7 December 2016

2. CODATA: Committee on Data for Science
and Technology
“Strengthen international science for the
benefit of society
ICSU’s Mission CODATA’s Mission
by promoting improved scientific and
technical data management and use.”

3. CODATA
Principles, Policies and Practice
Capacity Building
Frontiers of Data Science
IDW 2016, 11-17 Sept, Denver, CO.
Data Science Journal

4. The Case for Open Data
in a Big Data World
• Science International Accord on Open Data in a Big
Data World: http://www.science-international.org/
• Presents a powerful case that the profound
transformations mean that data should be:
• Open by default
• Intelligently open or FAIR Data
• Supported by four major international science
organisations.
• Lays out a framework of principles, responsibilities and
enabling practices for how the vision of Open Data in a
Big Data World can be achieved.
• Campaign for endorsements: over 100 organisations so
far.
• IUCr Position Paper: http://www.iucr.org/iucr/open-
data

5. African Open Science Platform
 Builds on the principles, responsibilities and enabling practices laid out in the Accord.
 Ambitious and far reaching initiative to encourage the development of national
science ecosystems that are equipped for open science.
 Conceived as a broad African initiative.
 Funding for a pilot phase from DST South Africa and NRF, directed towards
engagement with other African countries.
 Delivery by ASSAf with direction provided by CODATA International.
 High level Advisory Council, Technical Advisory Board
 1) encourage open data fora for development of strategies and policies; 2) review
incentives and disincentives and make recommendations; 3) roll out research data
training activities; 4) undertake a research data infrastructure roadmap exercise.

6. Building the Initiative
Establish African Open Data Forum / Platform
Funded Research Data Infrastructure Initiatives
Funded, co-designed transdisciplinary research
projects
Co-design African Open Data Policies
Develop Incentives Frameworks
Develop Research Data Science Training
African Research Data Infrastructure Roadmap
Activities require
low funding for
coordination,
secondment,
contributions in
kind and evaluation.
Activities require
higher investment
for coordination,
co-design
implemenatation
and evaluation.

7. African Open Science Platform
Scoping Workshop
 Developing a landscape study: what are the key data initiatives, national and regional
 Landscape survey: http://bit.ly/African_Data_Initiatives_Survey
 Policy Development: what policy frameworks are required to help take advantage of
the data revolution and Open Data?
 Incentives: what are the benefits of Open Data for African research institutions? For
researchers and research groups? What are the disincentives for data sharing? How
can these be mitigated?
 Data Skills and Training: what are the foundational data skills we need to develop?
How can data training be achieved at scale? Can we use the approaches of Data
Carpentry, Software Carpentry and the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science?
What other initiatives can we learn from?
 Data Infrastructure Roadmap: what are the priorities in terms of infrastructure? How
can we ensure data infrastructure benefits African researchers and research
institutions? How can we build on existing work in South African and SADC?

8. African Open Science Platform
Botswana
 Have already very strong engagement with Botswana. Provides one example of how
the pilot may develop.
 Meetings arranged by Joint Minds Consult with key Botswana research institutes.
 Workshops and discussions on research priorities, the data revolution and the benefits
of open science.
 Expertise in data, development of open data platforms can benefit strategically
important areas of research: vision of centres of excellence with strong emphasis on
open data and open science.
 With input from colleagues, Joint Minds have developed a White Paper to establish a
National Data Forum and a process for Data Strategy and Data Policy.
 Paper has been presented to the Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and
Technology.
 National Data Forum in March or April?

9. African Open Science Platform
Building the Initiative
 In discussions with Prof. Joseph Muliaro Wafula, CODATA ExComm, about high level
steps in Kenya.
 CODATA Task Group is planning a workshop in Madagascar in May.
 What is the landscape of data initiatives and of institutions and organisations with
which we can collaborate?
 In which countries is there enthusiasm for this approach and appetite to engage with
the initiative?
 How can the initiative engage with existing activities and stakeholders?
 Feedback on the approach and structure of the initiative? Are these the right issues to
address?

10. African Open Science Platform
Group Work
 Five presentations from experts involved with important initiatives.
 Each relates to one of the proposed themes of the pilot project.
 Five groups: chair and rapporteur.
 Understanding the Landscape: Of what other initiatives should we be aware? Tell us
about them http://bit.ly/African_Data_Initiatives_Survey
 What are the key lessons from these initiatives?
 How should the platform engage and collaborate with these initiatives?
 Recommendations: for each group and theme (nation strategy forums, policies,
incentives, training, roadmaps), please agree 5 recommendations for the pilot.
 What are the key issues and challenges?
 What do you want to achieve under these headings?
 What are the most effective and realistic steps for the platform to take?

11. Simon Hodson
Executive Director CODATA
www.codata.org
http://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.codata.org
Email: simon@codata.org
Twitter: @simonhodson99
Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59
CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris,
Thank you for your attention!
Credits for slides: inc. Geoffrey Boulton, Joseph Muliaro Wafula
Credit for photos: Andjani Gatzweiler

12. Latin American and Caribbean
Open Science Platform
 Emerged from the Accord, from interest of the ICSU Regional Office for LAC to
coordinate an Open Science initiative.
 Discussions at launch of RO, concept note, exchanges of e-mails and a couple of virtual
meetings.
 Extended concept paper has been developed.
 Working Group assembled, includes representatives of a number of key LAC science
organisations, plus Belmont Forum and CODATA.
 WG will meet in January in Panama to build on current documentation and write plan.
 Will arrange a stakeholder meeting in April or so.
 It is hoped that this will lead to a concrete funded initiative.
 Opportunity for engagement and sharing ideas and for South – South cooperation.

13. Resources: Current Best Practice for Research Data
Management Policies
 Expert report commissioned by CODATA member.
 Provides comprehensive summary of best practice
in funder data policies.
 Identifies key elements to be addressed:
1. Summary of policy drivers
2. Intelligent openness
3. Limits of openness
4. Definition of research data
5. Define data in scope
6. Criteria for selection
7. Summary of responsibilities
8. Infrastructure and costs
9. DMP requirements
10. Enabling discovery and reuse
11. Recognition and reward
12. Reporting requirements, compliance monitoring
 Zenodo: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.27872

14. Implementation Guidelines for the
Legal Interoperability of Research Data
 Joint CODATA-RDA Interest Group on Legal
Interoperability.
 Builds on work done in the context of the GEO Data
Sharing Working Group.
 Set of principles to help ensure the fewest possible
legal barriers relating to IP to sharing research
data.
 Implementation guidelines offer high level
guidance on steps to take to reduce legal barriers
to data reuse.
 Result of lengthy consideration by the IG and two
strenuous rounds of peer review.
 Final version of the guidelines:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.162241
1. Facilitate the lawful access to and
reuse of research data.
2. Determine the rights to and
responsibilities for the data.
3. Balance the legal interests.
4. State the rights transparently and
clearly.
5. Promote the harmonization of
rights in research data.
6. Provide proper attribution and
credit for research data.

15. CODATA-RDA School of Research
Data Science
• Contemporary research – particularly
when addressing the most significant,
transdisciplinary research challenges –
increasingly depends on a range of skills
relating to data. These skills include the
principles and practice of Open Science
and research data management and
curation, the development of a range of
data platforms and infrastructures, the
techniques of large scale analysis,
statistics, visualisation and modelling
techniques, software development and
data annotation. The ensemble of
these skills, relating to data in research,
can usefully be called ‘Research Data
Science’.

16. Foundational Research
Data Science Curriculum
Seven components: open science, data management and curation; software carpentry;
data carpentry; data infrastructures; statistics and machine learning; visualisation.
Builds on much existing courses to create something more than the sum of its parts:
 Open Science – reflection on ethos and requirements of sharing/openness
 Open Research Data – Basics of data management, DMPs, RDM life-cycle, data
publishing, metadata and annotation
 Software Carpentry – Introduction to programming in R, the Unix shell and Git (sharing
software and data)
 Data Carpentry – Introduction to SQL databases
 Visualisation – Tools, Critical Analysis of Visualisation
 Analysis – Statistics and Machine Learning (Clustering, supervised and unsupervised
learning)
 Computational Infrastructures – Introduction to cloud computing, launching a Virtual
Machine on an IaaS cloud

17. CODATA-RDA School of Research
Data Science
 First School of Research Data Science, 1-12
August 2016, ICTP, Trieste
 Funding for students and tutors provided by
ICTP, TWAS, CODATA, ACU, RDA Europe, GEO
and GODAN.
 Attended by 70 students from all around the
world.

18. Plan
Create
Use
AppraisePublish
Discover
Reuse
Store
Annotate
Select
DiscardDescribe
Identify Hand Over?
Access
Supporting the Research Data Lifecycle