Donor open data policy and practice: an analysis of five agriculture programmes

Open data is a powerful tool for promoting more effective decision making, fostering innovation, and driving organisational change through greater transparency . Researchers in the agriculture sector are increasingly being encouraged to open data from their field research and activities in order to address the complex challenges around food security and sustainability. But as funding institutions introduce their own open data policies, researchers are now asked to respond to multiple requests and requirements. This research was commissioned by a group of donors – DFID (the UK Department for International Development), BMGF (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and USAID (the US Agency for International Development) – in order to understand the opportunities for donors to make open data implementation more efficient and streamlined for their implementing research partners. The hope is to identify patterns of good practice which donors, including those outside agriculture, can build upon and contribute to through further dialogue. The Open Data Institute and GODAN have conducted a review of policy and data quality in five jointly funded agriculture programmes in order to identify the opportunities for agriculture donors to align their approaches (see Section 3). This was supplemented by a series of interviews and surveys with stakeholders from donor and research partner organisations to gain an impression of how policies are being implemented, including the challenges associated with further adoption of open data (Sections 4 and 5, respectively). From this multi-faceted review of policy and practice, we found several opportunities where donors of agriculture research programmes can align. We call upon donors to: Join a global funder dialogue with other donors, researchers, and research institutions Support and adopt common policy principles Share approaches towards dealing with ethical considerations Promote good open data practice among those receiving funding by regularly monitoring compliance and articulating clear expectations regarding budget allocations to ensure open data Increase engagement and introduce practical projects to promote data reuse and innovation Collect data use stories to demonstrate value and impacts of research data Support the capacity of implementing research partners to improve data availability, accessibility, discoverability and quality Adopt shared guidelines, tools and templates aimed at reducing the time and cost of policy compliance Incentivise researchers to publish by rewarding good quality data production Sustainably resource data publication and management Furthermore, we call on all funders of agriculture research to join a global funder dialogue with donors and research institutions with the aim of advancing a shared set of principles and sharing good organisational practices, to underpin more harmonized open data implementation. Original DOI: 10.1079/CABICOMMS-80-70