Sweetpotato Knowledge Portal
The first Open Access (OA) Workshop led by members of CIP’s Research Informatics Unit (RIU) and the Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) project was held in Nairobi from 4-8 July 2016. The facilitators of the meeting were Henry Juarez and Vilma Hualla from Lima Peru. The participants consisted of sweetpotato breeders and social scientists from various CIP offices in the Sub-Sharan region.
The meeting was officially opened by CIP’s regional director Dr. Adiel Mbabu. He began by acknowledging and congratulating three of the four 2016 World Food Prize Winners that is Drs. Maria Andrade, Jan Low and Robert Mwanga who were in attendance.
The first day of the workshop was spent explaining CIP’s approach to Open Data, Open Access and Research Data Management. The rest of the time consisted of hands-on sessions where participants were taught how to prepare metadata using the CG Core Metadata Schema and upload data on CIP’s OA data repository, Dataverse. A total of 32 datasets were prepared for Open Access publishing and they will be uploaded on CIP’s OA repository by the end of 2016.
The meeting ended on Friday the 8th of July and participants joined the rest of the campus at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for a coffee held on behalf of the World Food Prize Winners. The laureates were presented with gifts and each given an opportunity to give of a vote of thanks. They were later on interviewed by journalists present.
Drs. Andrade, Mwanga, Low and Bouis will receive the World Food Prize at a ceremony that will be held in the magnificent Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines, Iowa, on the evening of October 13, 2016. The event is the centerpiece of a three-day international symposium entitled the Borlaug Dialogue, which regularly draws over 1,200 people from 60 countries to discuss cutting-edge issues in global food security.
