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In terms of inclusion, RedCLARA, through the ALICE2 project, has deployed enormous efforts to incorporate into its backbone those countries in Latin America which still cannot get connected to the world through the Advanced Internet network. Honduras in one of such countries, and it is within it that a deep movement –from the government and with the participation of higher education institutions- is being incubated to establish the first national academic network. The action is led by the Deputy Directorate of Science and Research of the Directorate for Competitiveness and Innovation belonging to the External Planning and Cooperation Technical Secretariat, SEPLAN, and we talked about this with Engineer Ivette Castillo de Colindres, its deputy director.

Ivette Castillo de Colindres

The Directorate of Competitiveness and Innovation at the Science and Research Deputy Directorate has led the conversations with RedCLARA over the last year in order to evaluate the possible (and longed for) connection of Honduras to advanced academic networks through RedCLARA. From your point of view, why is it important that Honduras gets connected to the Latin American advanced network?

There are currently no doubts about the importance of investing on research, science and technology as one of the strategies to support the social and economic development of countries. We are increasingly aware of the correlation between this type of investments and the advances in terms of development. However, the concrete achievements are neither sufficient to reach the desired level of development nor to overcome the breach that separates us from the more advanced countries.

In Honduras, despite economic difficulties there have been efforts not only to increase the allocation of resources, but also to take advantage of both the human resources and physical capacities already available, focusing them in just one direction.

To this end we have created the CONSORTIUM of Universities, where all the country’s universities (20 in total) participate. Together with SEPLAN, they aim to boost the creation and training, as well as the use and development of scientific and technological tools.

Within the context of the objectives established, the importance of becoming part of RedCLARA is evident, as it links over 1,000 universities across the region, provides connection to other supranational networks and to top-level scientific information. This will enable an extensive cooperation for the promotion of scientific and technological development at a national and international level, so that universities and research centres in the country establish links with the scientific community via communications through the same channel, and develop R+D+I processes, thus improving the quality and contents of the higher education level.

What are the steps that the Deputy Directorate of Science and Innovation is taking to accomplish such connection?

The process was initiated in January this year with a presentation to the Consortium by SEPLAN about the Network in general. Then, in February we were visited in Honduras by Dr Luis Furlán, Director of the RAGIE Network in Guatemala and President of RedCLARA, Rafael Ibarra, Director of the RAICES Network in El Salvador and Claudia Córdova, head of training and other RedCLARA activities. They had a first contact with the highest authorities from the universities and their Vice-Chancellors of Directors of Research, in order to study in depth technical, scientific and general aspects related to the future incorporation of the country into this Network.

Subsequently, with the aim of giving greater importance and dissemination to the work done by the Network, we carried out in June in the city of Tegucigalpa the 1st Half-Yearly ALICE2 Meeting and the Technical Course on Transition to IPv6 Mechanisms, organised by RedCLARA, with the support of SEPLAN and the José Cecilio del Valle University.

Since that date, there have been two more meetings, where proposals by juridical bodies have been submitted. These could give birth to the National Network and the interest shown by universities is great.

How do Honduran universities evaluate the possible connection to RedCLARA?

Universities regard it as a very significant contribution; the physical installation and the implementation of functions do not represent a major challenge. Its financial sustainability does represent a major challenge, though.

According to the indexes reported by Index Mundi, Honduras (see: http://www.indexmundi.com/es/honduras/) has a population of just over eight million inhabitants, has a literacy rate (people over 15 who can read and write) of 80% (thus ranked in the 143rd position at a world level and only above Nicaragua and Guatemala in Latin America), a GDP of 33.63b (which places the country in the world’s 103rd position, barely above Paraguay and Nicaragua), and, up to March 2011 (according to a 2009 report) has a total of 731.700internet users. Given this scenario, what are the reasons that lead the Honduran government to focus human and economic resources, through your Deputy Directorate, in order to accomplish the implementation of a national academic network and through this the connection to RedCLARA?

In 2010 with a new approach for economic, social and political development, based on a well-planned process; the Decree N° 286-2009 establishes the “Law for the Establishment of a Country Vision and the Adoption of a Nation Plan for Honduras”, and creates the Technical Secretariat for External Planning and Cooperation (SEPLAN). The role of SEPLAN emphasises the actions and initiatives in the organisation and funding of research projects and the strengthening of national competitiveness, through the regional competitiveness committees organised in each region, through a multidisciplinary approach that is capable of generating greater cooperation with the entrepreneurial sector, where the State is seen as a facilitator to favour the identification of strategic priorities for national development, collaboration in innovation networks, investment on R+D+I, training of human resources, and the public-private interaction. Since RedCLARA is a window of opportunities that, as already said, establishes links with the scientific community, communicated through the same channel, developing R+D+I processes, and thus improving the quality and contents of the higher education level, it is a reliable tool for development.

What is the timescale you are considering for the creation of the national Honduran academic network and what are the steps you are following to accomplish the initial objective of generating such network and establish the physical infrastructure of advanced internet?

At the moment the CONSORTIUM is analysing a series of juridical levels which could serve as the basis for the conformation of the National Network. Once the universities make a final decision and undertake the commitment to participate in the Network, SEPLAN will support the elaboration of the document that seals the Network’s creation. The documentation was handed in on August 3rd of the present year. We have already received feedback from some universities, and therefore we expect to draw up a summary with all observations over the next few weeks.

Do you think the organisation of the half-yearly RedCLARA and ALICE2 meeting in Tegucigalpa somehow contributed to the objective of creating the Honduran network?

It did not contribute to the creation of the Honduran network, but it did contribute to making more visible the importance of participating in it and the benefits that universities can obtain from their incorporation. It gave visibility to the network not only for universities, but also for the population in general.

Focusing fully on Hondura’s connection to RedCLARA, when would you expect this to become a reality and what do you think Honduras can contribute to RedCLARA and vice versa?

I would expect it to become a reality this year, and among the contributions that Honduras could bring into the Network I could mention the capacities and the work done by some Research Institutions in the country, and which would be shared with the scientific community. An example is the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research (FHIA – See: News about the FHIA March 2007 No. 10), an entity which does research in the agricultural field and has obtained significant achievements in the genetic improvement of bananas, producing hybrids (FHIA-17, FHIA-21, FHIA-23, among others) which are being used in more than 50 countries around the world, since they represent an excellent food alternative due to their high productive potential and low production cost. Another example is Hondura’s National Autonomous University, whose School of Medicine has a Postgraduate in Neurology, which is a Pilot Programme at a global level and is the postgraduate with the greatest scientific production in Central America, with publications featured in globally renowned journals, such as Nature, Lancet Neurology, Brain, Epilepsia, etc. It has also developed educational guides approved at an international level for global use (See: Article in the Journal of Neurological Science 15/02/2007; volume 253 #1-2: pages 7-17). The other example is the Central American Astronomic Observatory at Suyapa, where research is conducted in the areas of astronomy, astrophysics, remote perception and archaeoastronomy, with applications in issues related to Land Use Planning, Management and Prevention of Natural Disasters. Other examples are the Regional Centre of the Atlantic Coast (CURLA) in the area of agriculture, the National School of Forestry Science (ESNACIFOR) in the area of forestry, the Pan-American Agricultural School (EAP), which aim its research towards entrepreneurial projection in agricultural issues and has managed to create improved species of seeds that are resistant to local plagues.

RedCLARA’s contribution to Honduras will lie in its contribution to the development and improvement of the country’s competitiveness, providing a tool which makes it possible to add and generate value, develop, disseminate and incorporate knowledge resulting from R+D+I activities of the different networks around the world.

Financed by the FP7 – Capacities, of the European Commission the CHAIN Project, in which RedCLARA is strongly involved, it aims to coordinate and leverage recent efforts and results with a vision of a harmonised and optimised interaction model for e-Infrastructure and specifically Grid interfaces between Europe and the rest of the world.

Federico Ruggeri, CHAIN

CHAIN (Co-oordination & Harmonisation of Advanced e-INfrastructures), – which was launched on December 14, 2010, and will run till the end of 2012 - will elaborate a strategy and define the instruments in order to ensure coordination and interoperation of the European Grid Infrastructures with other external e-Infrastructures. In order to know more about CHAIN and to evaluate its first year of action, we talked with Federico Ruggeri, its project Coordinator.

 

CHAIN is completing the first half of its lifetime. After a year of work in order to foster and ensure the interoperability of the European Grid Infrastructures with the e-Infrastructures of the rest of the world, and considering what has been done with the project partners from Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, what would you identify as the most relevant project assets and which would identify as its most relevant contributions to e-Science development?

The CHAIN project, started on the 1st of December 2010, aims to coordinate and leverage the efforts made over the past 6 years to extend the European eInfrastructure (and particularly Grid) operational and organisational principles to a number of regions in the world. CHAIN uses these results with a vision of a harmonised and optimised interaction model for eInfrastructure and specifically Grid interfaces between Europe and the rest of the world with a wide geographical coverage from Latin America to Asia Pacific.

The project has started with a large spectrum survey on National and Regional Grid Infrastructures to complement and update the knowledge base originated by previous regional projects such as EELA, EUMEDGRID, EU-IndiaGrid, EUAsiaGrid and SEE-GRID. This knowledge base is accessible from the project web site www.chain-project.eu with an interactive interface base on geographical maps: http://www.chain-project.eu/knowledge-base.

CHAIN has also developed a strategy of events (workshops, schools and conferences) to ensure coordination and interoperation of the European Grid Infrastructure with those emerging in other regions of the world (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Mediterranean and Middle East).

The contact with Virtual Research Communities (VRC) has also been one of the most important activities performed. We signed Memoranda with WeNMR and WFR4G and are working on building an intercontinental VRC on Climate Change. The high level conference organised at ICTP in Trieste last May has been very important to gather Climate Change researchers and eInfrastructures providers and managers in order to understand the requirements of such a large community.

Six Virtual Research Communities (VCR) were identified by CHAIN in early April as possible main actors for the major task of proposing a reference model for VCR. Are they participating in the elaboration of that reference model? Is that model currently under production? Which do you envision its key directions will be?

We are currently working with them in order to clarify their requirements and we have prepared a model that is based on a short term solution based on Scientific Gateways and a long term vision for interoperability. The short term is currently under development and will be demonstrated early next year. The goal is to demonstrate that e-Infrastructures can be made interoperable to each other using standards and that VRC-specific applications can be submitted from anywhere and run everywhere.

In order to reach this objective we need to ease the access of users to the eInfrastructures and we are convinced that Identity Federations can provide a boost in this respect.

How do you evaluate this first year of CHAIN and how do you envision the second year?

The first year of activity has been very exciting and we spent a lot of effort in collecting information and organising meetings and workshops in order to pass the message that a large intercontinental coordination is possible and it is beneficial for several scientific communities.

The second year will be devoted to consolidating the results obtained, continue to involve the interested scientific communities and finally harvesting results from what we have done. We are currently planning to organise several workshops and to demonstrate the opportunities offered by distributed computing infrastructures to the selected scientific communities.

A road-map on the interoperations between European and other regional Grid Infrastructures will be another of the most important deliverables of CHAIN.

All the CHAIN targeted regions are currently operating grid infrastructures, which are the main differences between those regions in terms of the management and use of those grids?

As it came out form our survey the main differences are related to the organisational structure and, in a few cases, on the different middleware that is being used. The former, being a “natural” consequence of different opportunities offered by the governmental structures and different aggregations of scientific communities, is sometimes related to the latter: India and China show a very strong governmental support and a specific middleware.

In other regions the message on the importance of eInfrastructures has been rapidly endorsed by the scientific communities, and European best practices were applied. On the other hand the activity has in general received lower attention (and funds) from the governments.

Sustainability of the e-Infrastructures in those non European regions that are supported by the European Commission through its different cooperation programmes is a major issue. Which are the main concerns of the CHAIN leaders in terms of the future sustainability of these infrastructures?

Sustainability has many faces and all of them should contribute to the final result:

-         eInfrastructures should address a large number of users;
-         public funds should be available to support the common infrastructures.

We have made progress in both of the above points but still we see a long road ahead. The number of users should be increased in order to have a sufficient bottom-up pressure on the stakeholders. At the same time some infrastructural investments are needed in many countries in order to facilitate the process and reduce the costs of deployment of leading edge eInfrastructures.

Which has been the major contribution of RedCLARA and Latin America to the project?

RedCLARA has been key in collecting information on the state of the art in Latin America with an original approach to the topics of organisational structures and sustainability. The LA scenario is a very relevant example of regional specificities that have to be taken into account and a very active source of possible approaches that could be applied elsewhere.

RedCLARA is the organisation of reference for eInfrastructures in LA, but it can also be a model in other regional contexts.

 

Launched in October 2009, COAR, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, is uniting 59 institutions in 23 countries from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America. Its mission is to enhance greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access digital repositories.

Prof. Norbert Lossau, COAR

That goal of improving global visibility of research outputs through networks of Open Access Repositories (OAR) is strongly shared by RedCLARA, that is not only a member of COAR, but is also fostering the creation of OAR in Latin America by managing the IADB funded project “Regional Strategy and Interoperability and Management Framework for a Latin American Federated Network of Institutional Scientific Documentation Repositories”, supporting the strong CoLaBoRa community and participating in new initiatives with COAR. In order to better know COAR and really understand the importance of the OAR, we talked to Prof. Norbert Lossau, President of COAR and Director of the Goettingen State and University Library, Germany.

 

COAR promotes infrastructure interoperability and a joint global data store of Open Access repositories to enable and support the re-use of data by service and portal providers. Currently, COAR has three working groups, each with its own set of responsibilities, objectives, and related activities. COAR aims to enhance the visibility of research outputs, pave the road to interoperability, foster knowledge exchange on repository issues, and strengthen international open access implementation.

 

Probably the better way to describe what COAR is trying to do is by saying that they are putting all their effort in order to ensure the successful sharing of research worldwide in the best possible form, harvesting regional and national efforts all over the world. And when it comes to a region, COAR’s President has a nice view of what is going on with Latin America: “I think the collaboration with Latin America is one of the most promising developments to facilitate the building of global research infrastructures, based on Open Access and digital repositories”. That opinion was shared with us the day we asked him for the interview that we invite you to start reading now:

 

In the context of the Information Society almost every day a new concept or way of producing content (sometimes knowledge) is born. It is difficult to manage the information avalanche and, of course, the result is disinformation. In this particular scenario and from your position, how would you explain what the Open Access Repositories are and what they are for, to people who are not experts in this matter?

 

Before the Internet was created, we had libraries, museums and archives to collect, structure, make accessible (through catalogues) and preserve information and knowledge resources. In the library world we had also international library loan to provide books and other library materials from one place to the other. Outside this cosmos of traditional infrastructure providers we had numerous further sources of information (sociological surveys, data captured from instruments or in laboratories, audio, film etc.), often hosted by research institutions themselves. The World Wide Web and digitisation of all types of information and knowledge resources have provided the platform and the potential to link and network all this information, removing barriers between content providers and databases. Open Access repositories are the libraries of the online world, securing open and long-term access for any type of information source.

 

Which would be for you the best possible way to share research worldwide?

 

A global system of Open Access repositories, serving the same protocols and being compliant with data and technical standards, which allow service providers to build discovery, filtering, profiling, data-mining, visualisation and multiple other services on top of these data. From the end-user perspective those services would offer seamless access to a global virtual knowledge base which can be (re)-used and enhanced following good scientific practice (e.g. by giving credit to the content producers).

 

Why is interoperability so important?

 

Without interoperable technologies, protocols and interfaces we could not use the data network worldwide. Your e-mail would be refused when you send it to a colleague in another country and communication would become very patchy. Try to access all research articles in a discipline or all digitised collections from the Latin-American region in one pass. You would fail in the current environment. COAR wants to make access and (re)use of information sources as easy as plugging into the data network, independently of their physical location. In our recently published paper “The case for Interoperability for Open Access Repositories” we have described why interoperability is so important and how we can achieve it, whether on system, data, semantics or policy level (see: http://www.coar-repositories.org/files/COAR_Interoperability_Briefing.pdf, Editors: Eloy Rodrigues, University of Minho, Portugal and Chair of the COAR Working Group on ”Repository Interoperability” and Abby Clobridge, Clobridge Consulting, United States).

 

COAR is a very young Association. Could you please tell us how it was born and which are the fundamental needs that the people behind its creation wanted to tackle by forming the Association?

 

The idea to create COAR was born during the course of the European DRIVER project (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for Europe). DRIVER had been very successful in building a European repository Community of Practice and a virtual repository network. The DRIVER guidelines had been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Japanese. Some DRIVER consortium partners felt that the Open Access repository community would lose seriously momentum if the project funding was to run out. This concern was shared by more and more institutions also outside of Europe (i.e. in Japan, China, Latin-America, Canada, U.S.) and led to the founding of COAR, an organisationally very lightweight, legal not-for-profit-Association according to German law. The initial objectives, which are still valid, have been to lobby for repositories, their networks and repository based e-Infrastructures at the national and international level, the development and support of interoperable standards for national aggregation of research content in open access (OA) repositories, support and coordination of global collaborative efforts towards high-quality OA data and interoperable systems, to have a reference point for repository standardization efforts, the repository community platform, and a venue for discussion and meetings working towards streamlining OA repository developments, the promotion of an increased rate of self-archived deposit with as little burden as possible on the researcher and to advocate for consistent policy formulation on institutional repository development.

 

What are the synergies that you would personally like to see functioning between COAR and RedCLARA's OAR initiatives?

 

The data network, maintained by RedCLARA, is, like the European GÉANT data network, only useful when they are connected and bits and bytes can be sent without barriers. The mission of creating a global, interoperable network of Open Access Repositories, where services can be built on top of them (see under 2.), can only be achieved together. Expertise can be exchanged among practitioners on very, concrete topics like “How do I have to implement my repository in order to be internationally compliant”, “What are successful ways to approach researchers, funders, ministries”, “Are there ways to modify licensing agreements with publishers”, “How will we link publications to research data”. The success of RedCLARAs OAR initiative would also be a success for the international OA repository movement.

 

In your own words, why does Latin America need an OAR?

 

Latin-American countries collaborate in many areas, including economy, culture higher-education and of course RedCLARA to provide a seamless data network. And you share the same language, Spanish with a close relation to Portuguese in Brasil (“Portunol”). Apart from the rather homogenous language in the Latin-American region there are quite some similarities to the European region. It creates many opportunities for synergies if countries in a region work together: you can jointly apply for funding, share work e.g. in developing training materials, exchange best practices, build critical mass of research content (in particular compared to other regions), get more influence in addressing other stakeholders (such as publishers). And there is another, very research-oriented reason to create cross-country networks: because many of our researchers already work in communities beyond borders. And their expectation is to work with an infrastructure that is equally regional, resp. international.

 

Why is it important to foster collaboration and synergies between COAR and a Latin American OAR?

 

See above my dedicated vote for an international OA repository infrastructure. How would this work without Latin-America? And at the same time, how would the Latin-American community and network work without the rest of the world? Global communities need a joint organisational backbone, supporting systematic collaboration across all regions. This is the role where I see COARs (International) responsibility. But the international organisation needs to build and rely on actors in countries and regions which are rooted in their own culture, research and infrastructure system, political and legal jurisdiction, economical environments. And they need of course to translate into their own languages.

 

Finally, when at the end of the day you realize that all what you are doing in COAR (as what we do in RedCLARA) is to work and collaborate in order to generate new knowledge and to share that knowledge, what is the specific weight that you assign to the marriage between the words “knowledge” and “sharing”?

 

Knowledge and sharing are inseparably connected. “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” is a citation from Isaac Newton (1676), which has been used as motto for the Open Access pilot of the European Commission (2008). Open sharing of knowledge can be competitive compared to closed knowledge production cycles, as the Economist Heidi Williams from MIT has proved in her article “Intellectual property rights and innovation: Evidence from the human genome” (2010). And with respect to the benefit of our Society, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda in Europe points out: “"Scientific information has the power to transform our lives for the better – it is too valuable to be locked away. In addition, every EU citizen has the right to access and benefit from knowledge produced using public funds." (Ghent, OpenAIRE Launch event, 2 Dec. 2010).

 

More information:

 

On July 2nd and 3rd, 2012, Lima will host the Second Conference of Information and Communication Technologies Directors from higher education institutions. People involved in ICT management in Latin American universities are invited to submit proposals related to this topic. The deadline to submit the material is April 15th, 2012.

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