Open Access and Open Data at CGIAR: Challenges and Solutions

CGIAR is a global research partnership of 15 geographically and scientifically diverse Centers dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resource management. The Centers are charged with accelerating innovation to tackle challenges at a variety of scales from the local to the global. This requires data and other research outputs to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – that is, open via FAIR principles, and inter-linked where relevant. CGIAR Centers have made strong progress in implementing publication and data repositories; however, many of these still represent silos whose contents are not generally easily discoverable or inter-linked (e.g., agronomic trial data with socioeconomic or adoption data in the same geographies). In the absence of such interoperability-mediated discovery, “open” is of limited utility. The overall goal is for CGIAR’s trove of research data and associated information to be indexed and interlinked through a demand-driven cyberinfrastructure for agriculture, ensuring that research outputs are discoverable by humans and machines, and reusable via appropriate licensing to enhance innovation, uptake and impact. There are challenges to achieving this goal, not only across CGIAR, but for the agricultural domain in general. Among the foremost hurdles is that “open” tends to remain an unfunded mandate, making it difficult to operationalize effectively. Further, there is still significant concern on the part of scientists about making data open – largely centered around issues of trust, time, and quality – resulting in repositories frequently exposing metadata rather than the data sets themselves. While the ability to find metadata about resources qualifies as improvement, it continues to impose barriers to data access, discoverability, integration, and analysis, without which complex challenges to global agriculture development cannot be effectively addressed. CGIAR is addressing the urgent need to create a data sharing culture and enabling environment for Open Access and Open Data (OA/OD) that includes projects planning for OA/OD and allocating funds to support it, in parallel with the technical infrastructure mentioned above. While the technology necessary to enable FAIR outputs exists, achieving success implies data provider and consumer trust and buy-in, agreement and adherence to interoperability standards and/or mapping across varied approaches, and compliance with guidelines (including those on citation and licensing governing content reuse). Agricultural institutions, including CGIAR, are only now beginning to address these issues systematically, to agree on and adopt standards-based systems and processes, and to build cross-walks across differing schemas. Through its Open Access and Open Data initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and via plans for an ambitious Big Data and ICT Platform , CGIAR is developing technical and cultural approaches that will enable research content to be consistently and seamlessly discovered, interlinked, and analyzed across its Centers. This paper describes the strategy used to identify the specific contexts and challenges faced by Centers in building an infrastructure and culture for OA/OD across CGIAR, with the ultimate goal of achieving greater impact in agricultural research for development

Overwintering of Rabies Virus in Silver Haired Bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans).

Silver-haired bats, (Lasionycteris noctivagans) are semi-colonial, migratory tree bats that have infrequent contact with humans. Despite the species rarity, the L. noctivagans rabies variant is the most commonly reported rabies virus variant (RABV) in domestically acquired human rabies cases in the US. Unlike big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), L. noctivagans are not considered true hibernators. It is unknown if RABV can overwinter in hibernating L. noctivagans or is only maintained in members of this taxa that migrate to warmer climates. To better understand RABV overwintering in this species, L. noctivagans were inoculated intramuscularly with either a homologous RABV (L. noctivagans Virus 1) or one of two heterologous RABV (Eptesicus fuscus Virus 2 and Myotis lucifugus Virus 1). Five days following inoculation, L. noctivagans were placed in a hibernation chamber for 6 weeks. Our results demonstrate that rabies virus can overwinter in L. noctivagans yet the incubation period was extended 6 weeks when compared to bats maintained at ambient temperatures. Additionally, we found that the longer the incubation period, the greater the viral dissemination to the salivary glands. Similar to our previous studies, L. noctivagans were most susceptible to a homologous variant. In summary, we found that RABV incubation is extended following a subcutaneous exposure or maintenance in hibernation and longer incubation times increase dissemination and potential for transmission

Single factor ANOVA of daily individual weight average grouped by cage reveals no variation in weight dependent on cage location.

<p>Single factor ANOVA of daily individual weight average grouped by cage reveals no variation in weight dependent on cage location.</p

Dissemination of Rabies virus RNA in bats maintained at ambient temperature, as evaluated by real time-rtPCR. Data is provided as Ct values.

<p>Dissemination of Rabies virus RNA in bats maintained at ambient temperature, as evaluated by real time-rtPCR. Data is provided as Ct values.</p

Bats maintained in hibernation for 6 weeks.

<p>Serological and survival results of <i>L</i>. <i>noctivagans</i> inoculated with homologous or heterologous RABV via SC or IM inoculation. Regardless of the virus or route, the titer of inoculum was 10⁴TCID₅₀.</p

Weight changes in rabies inoculated bats following hibernation.

<p>Weight loss in hibernated bats inoculated with: A. LnV1. Bats 2, 3, and 4 developed rabies. B. EfV2. Bat 8 developed rabies. C. MlV1. Bat 11 developed rabies. * Denotes day 42. D. Percent weight change (grams) in non-inoculated control bats. E Percent weight change (grams) over the 6 week hibernation period.</p

Bats maintained at ambient temperature.

<p>Serological and survival results of <i>L</i>. <i>noctivagans</i> inoculated with homologous or heterologous RABV via SC or IM inoculation. Regardless of the virus or route, the titer of inoculum was 10⁴TCID₅₀.</p