A framework for knowledge sharing and interoperability in agricultural research for development

Abstract

In an ideal world all data would be produced using open formats and would be linked directly to other related data on the web. This would give the possibility for service providers to set up information systems by mixing and matching data from different distributed repositories. A scenario like this is no science fiction. Nevertheless most data (of all kinds) resides in database and repository silos, and efforts to create one stop access to distributed data lack functionalities, robustness or sustainability.The CIARD initiative is working to make agricultural research information publicly available and accessible to all, by acting on both those issues. Among its actions are advocating and promoting open access, improving applicability and enabling effective use of data and information in agricultural research and innovation. In this paper we present the CIARD initiative and concentrate on FAO's contribution to it. We present the Linked Data approach, the vocabulary editor VocBench, the domain specific tagger AgroTagger and the RING registry of services and tools. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.