The CIARD movement is a collective commitment to promote and sustain the sharing of agricultural research outputs in a global network of truly public collections, based on a Manifesto and a common set of Values To ensure that public domain research outputs in the form of information, data and knowledge form part of a global 'knowledge commons' for agriculture, these outputs should be created, assembled, handled and disseminated in ways that ensure that they will be as Available, Accessible and Applicable as possible.
This CIARD Checklist is part of a broader treatment of content flows, including the need to understand researchers' and other actors' needs through assessments, acquisition of appropriate information, etc.
The Checklist represents a set of items through which organisations, research systems and individuals can progress towards achievement of the CIARD Manifesto and Values. It is not a set of requirements. There are many different ways in which the Checklist agenda can be achieved, according to the specific scope of an organisation's work. So everyone will be able to develop their own route through the Checklist. Managers and staff can assess an organisation or system against the Checklist to reveal its status, and then they can prioritise and stage actions over time to achieve as many of the Checklist items as are appropriate to local needs. Implementation of many of the Checklist items will depend on capacity building in important techniques for key actors.
The Checklist actions are aimed at developing necessary institutional readiness, as well as approaches to managing digital content, licensing and 'opening up' that content, and then disseminating it. They address the applicability of research outputs to a range of stakeholders, setting out approaches that will ensure that research outcomes are more likely to be sustainable. In addition to the Checklist, a range of targeted CIARD Pathways are provided showing the ways in which the Checklist actions can be achieved.
Developing Institutional Readiness
- Introduce and gain support for the CIARD Manifesto and Values in your institution.
- Have your institution recognised as a CIARD participant.
- Adopt a formal institutional information/communication strategy.
- Develop the capacities of your institution to achieve the CIARD Checklist.
- Develop national/local partner networks to share resources and skills.
Increasing the Availability, Accessibility and Applicability of Research Outputs
- Ensure that your research outputs are available digitally.
- Develop institutional or thematic repositories of your outputs as open archives.
- Use international metadata standards, data exchange protocols and agricultural vocabularies and thesauri.
- Develop a clearly defined licensing policy for your outputs.
- Optimise the structure and the content of your web sites for search engines.
- Share your metadata by participating in international information systems.
- Use 'social networking' media and applications to share your outputs.
- Build formal and informal networks to repackage your outputs.