Since 1971, the CGIAR and its partner organizations have been conducting research programs to contribute to the global efforts on eradication of hunger and poverty through institutional research activities and also through the CGIAR Research Programs. Research data of the activities are very valuable, can be seen as long-term assets of the institutions and can be treated as a major International Public Good (IPG). As these projects are supported with public funds it is essential to extract maximum public benefit from the research data. For the same, several donor agencies are now insisting on data sharing requirements in their grant contracts and for the ‘open data’ concept to be applied to the research data of the work they fund..
