Hyderabad, India
26 September 2013
EXPLOREit @ ICRISAT (exploreit.icrisat.org) breaks information barriers by making large volumes of agricultural scientific knowledge and information easily accessible by the public. EXPLOREit was launched today by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at its headquarters in Hyderabad, India.
“We are doubly excited – not only have we given easier access to all of ICRISAT’s 40 years of scientific research through EXPLOREit, but we have achieved this through the MultiProfiler concept, a revolutionary way of making information accessible,” said Dr William D. Dar, ICRISAT Director General.
“We found that typical websites are too restrictive in giving access to information, and do not present the information in ways that are easy for people to view the detail of the content. ICRISAT’s new MultiProfiler concept provides information through multiple navigations and creates easy to view profiles on the subject areas,” explained Ms Joanna Kane-Potaka, ICRISAT Director of Strategic Marketing and Communication.
“Sharing publicly-funded agricultural information in the most accessible way is critically important to achieve our agricultural development goals of reducing rural poverty, increasing food security, improving human health and nutrition, and ensuring more sustainable management of natural resources,” stressed Dr Dar. “ICRISAT is leading this growing global movement, and commits to playing a dynamic role in the process of mainstreaming open access to information through EXPLOREit.”
EXPLOREit is now to become the main source of ICRISAT’s scientific information, with profiles of all topics, systems, crops, locations and resources where it works.
“EXPLOREit reflects our commitment to make ICRISAT’s scientific information available to the public,” said Dr Nigel Poole, ICRISAT Board Chair. “It sets a new standard for sharing of information, and therefore promotes collaboration. To achieve this, ICRISAT has made a momentous leap in its use of technology with EXPLOREit – a dynamic site that feeds information from databases using tags and harvests information from other websites,” he added.
In today’s world, where the value of information increases with the number of people sharing it, EXPLOREit speeds up ICRISAT’s journey of transformation as an open access organization, with the ultimate goal to ensure that broader access to agricultural research, knowledge and information contributes to greater food security and improved livelihoods, especially in developing countries.
BACKGROUND
The MultiProfiler concept used to develop EXPLOREit firstly identifies categories by which people come looking for information. This forms the basis of the multiple navigations as each category has its own navigation and tabs with information. The information can be repeated within any or all categories if relevant. For ICRISAT, it was identified that people come looking for information based on the following categories: topics (e.g. nutrition or climate change), specific crops, geographic location, type of farming system, or resource type (e.g. publications or data). Sub-categories/subject areas are then identified and profiles created for each. So if ICRISAT has a publication, data set or video about chickpea being used to cope with climate change in East Africa, this same information will automatically feed and be displayed in all three profiles – chickpea, climate change and East Africa.
Despite building such a complex architecture consisting of the most recent technology and modern modular/distributed processes, ICRISAT has been able to balance this with the need for a simple, user friendly and attractive look to EXPLOREit.
For more information on EXPLOREit and the MultiProfiler concept, see exploreit.icrisat.org/about. Some other features of EXPLOREit include: a “Convert profile to PDF” on each profile which places all the content of that profile onto a PDF document for further use; the ability to subscribe to latest updates by individual subject area; and social media sharing options.
The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics have over 2 billion people, and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT innovations help the dryland poor move from poverty to prosperity by harnessing markets while managing risks – a strategy called Inclusive Market- Oriented development (lMOD).
ICRISAT is headquartered in Patancheru near Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, with two regional hubs and five country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. www.icrisat.org
CGIAR is a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future. Its science is carried out by 15 research Centers who are members of the CGIAR Consortium in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations. www.cgiar.org
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