Intelligent Monitoring System for Bird Behavior Study

Until now, the best way to obtain relevant information about the behaviour of animals is capturing them. However, the procedure to capture individuals cause them stress and introduces an effect on the measurement that can affect the behaviour of the animals. To solve this problems this paper describes a novel intelligent motoring system for birds breeding in nest boxes. This system is based in a network of smart-nest boxes that allows access to the acquired data all over the world through internet. A prototype of the proposed system has been implemented for the evaluation of a lesser kestrel breeding colony in Southern Spain. This prototype has offered in a short time more valuable information that several years of manual captures. This prototype has demonstrated that the proposed system allows short and log time animal behaviour evaluation without interferences or causing stress.Junta de Andalucía P06-RNM-01712Junta de Andalucía P06-RNM-04588Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02476Junta de Andalucía TIC-570

Cattle transhumance and agropastoral nomadic herding practices in central Cameroon

Abstract Background In sub-Saharan Africa, livestock transhumance represents a key adaptation strategy to environmental variability. In this context, seasonal livestock transhumance also plays an important role in driving the dynamics of multiple livestock infectious diseases. In Cameroon, cattle transhumance is a common practice during the dry season across all the main livestock production zones. Currently, the little recorded information of the migratory routes, grazing locations and nomadic herding practices adopted by pastoralists, limits our understanding of pastoral cattle movements in the country. GPS-tracking technology in combination with a questionnaire based-survey were used to study a limited pool of 10 cattle herds from the Adamawa Region of Cameroon during their seasonal migration, between October 2014 and May 2015. The data were used to analyse the trajectories and movement patterns, and to characterize the key animal health aspects related to this seasonal migration in Cameroon. Results Several administrative Regions of the country were visited by the transhumant herds over more than 6 months. Herds travelled between 53 and 170 km to their transhumance grazing areas adopting different strategies, some travelling directly to their destination areas while others having multiple resting periods and grazing areas. Despite their limitations, these are among the first detailed data available on transhumance in Cameroon. These reports highlight key livestock health issues and the potential for multiple types of interactions between transhumant herds and other domestic and wild animals, as well as with the formal livestock trading system. Conclusion Overall, these findings provide useful insights into transhumance patterns and into the related animal health implications recorded in Cameroon. This knowledge could better inform evidence-based approaches for designing infectious diseases surveillance and control measures and help driving further studies to improve the understanding of risks associated with livestock movements in the region

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative: Sharing Data on Scholarly Research Performance

In the current era of worldwide competition in higher education, universities are caught up in market processes that encourage compliance with the mea-surement systems applied by world university rankings. Despite questions about the rankings’ methodologies and data sources, universities continue to adopt assessment and evaluation practices that require academic researchers to publish in sources indexed by the major commercial bibliographic databases used by world rankings. Building on a critique of the limited biblio-metric measures and underlying assumptions of rankings, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative interdisciplinary research project aggregates and analy-ses scholarly research data including open access output from multiple open sources for more than 20,000 institutions worldwide. To understand who is creating knowledge and how diversity is enacted through the transmission of knowledge we analyse workforce demographic data. In this article, we discuss the project’s rationale, methodologies and examples of data analysis that can enable universities to make independent assessments, ask ques-tions about rankings, and contribute to open knowledge-making and shar-ing. Expanding on our presentation to the LIBER Online 2021 Conference, we discuss collaboration with academic libraries and other scholarly communication stakeholders to develop and extend the open knowledge project

Changing the Academic Gender Narrative through Open Access

In this article, we ask whether dominant narratives of gender and performance within academic institutions are masking stories that may be both more complex and potentially more hopeful than those which are often told using publication-related data. Influenced by world university rankings, institutions emphasise so-called ‘excellent’ research practices: publish in ‘high impact’, elite subscription journals indexed by the commercial bibliographic databases that inform the various ranking systems. In particular, we ask whether data relating to institutional demographics and open access publications could support a different story about the roles that women are playing as pioneers and practitioners of open scholarship. We review gender bias in scholarly publications and discuss examples of open access research publications that highlight a positive advantage for women. Using analysis of workforce demographics and open research data from our Open Knowledge Initiative project, we explore relationships and correlations between academic gender and open access research output from universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. This opens a conversation about different possibilities and models for exploring research output by gender and changing the dominant narrative of deficit in academic publishing

Becoming Open Knowledge Institutions: Divergence, Dialogue and Diversity

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) is an innovative research project that collects and analyses publicly available research output data to assist and encourage researchers, academics, administrators and executives to understand the actual and potential reach of openness in research, and to assess their progress on the path towards open knowledge institutions. By taking a broad global approach and using multiple data sources, the project diverges from existing approaches, methods and bibliometric measures in the scholarly research environment. It combines analysis of research output, citations, publication sources and publishers, funders, social media events, open and not open access to provide overviews of research output and performance at institutional, funder, consortial and country levels. The project collects and analyses personnel diversity data such as gender, focusing on widening the reach of data analysis to emphasise the importance and value of diversity in research and knowledge production. Interactive visual tools present research output and performance to encourage understanding and dialogue among researchers and management. The path towards becoming open knowledge institutions involves a process of cultural change, moving beyond dominant publishing and evaluation practices. This paper discusses how through divergence, diversity and dialogue the COKI project can contribute to this change, with examples of applications in understanding and embracing openness