Presented by Prof Geoffrey Boulton to EU-Africa High-level group, 20 October 2017

1. The African Open Science Platform
Geoffrey Boulton
International Council for Science (ICSU)
Committee on Data for Science & Technology (CODATA)
& Edinburgh University

2. 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

3. 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

4. The “Science International” Accord:
principles of open data
(www.icsu.org/science-international)
Responsibilities
1-2. 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

5. 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

6. CODATACODATA
II
SS
UU
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.
African Open Science Platform
Pilot Project Workpackages

7. 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)
President
Dr Susan Veldsman (ASSAf)
Secretary
Technical Advisory Board
(Technical requirements & solutions)
Prof. Muliaro Wafula (Kenya) – Chair
Anwar 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

8. 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

9. Principal Active Communities

10. 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

11. • 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. CODATACODATA
II
SS
UU
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

15. AOSP Series of Webinars on Incentives October 2017

16. • 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
?

17. INTERNATIONAL DATA WEEK
IDW 2018
Gaborone, Botswana: 22–26 October 2018