agINFRA - Building e-infrastructure and services for the agricultural research community

The agINFRA project aims to provide the agricultural research community with e-infrastructure and services for open data access, sharing and re-use. This paper introduces the project’s objectives and context, technical elements as well as the envisaged range of data resources. Furthermore opportunities for participation are highlighted. 1 Towards global sharing of agricultural research results agINFRA 1 is an e-infrastructure project funded under the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme. It started in October 2011 and will run for three years. agINFRA develops infrastructure and services for sharing agricultural research results that are managed by international, national, institutional as well as subject-based repositories. The project involves technology and content partners from Europe, China, Ecuador and India. One of the lead partners is the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and the project goals are aligned with the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative. 2 The initiative mobilizes and supports institutions in making agricultural research results more accessible globally. Many agricultural research organizations already have content repositories and portals aimed to serve researchers, educators and extension workers. These institutional as well 1 agINFRA, http://www.aginfra.eu 2 CIARD, http://www.ciard.net