Franzen**, H., Girardot*, B., Radigon*, P., Podlacha**, G. and Giovannetti**, J.F.

Presently there is a lot of debate of "inclusion or exclusion“, concerning advanced information technology! Will the networked economy widen or narrow the gap between developing and industrialized countries? For the research community the answer is definitive: advanced information technologies will bring the research community closer together, will create a global knowledge system while, in the long run, also narrowing the scientific gap between the North and the South. These general trends have already let to the initiation of a couple of international programmes and activities to facilitate ARD networking by advanced information technologies.

For Europe a regional Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development (EIARD) was informally initiated in 1995 among the Member States of the European Union aiming to create a coherent and proactive environment for co-operation, partnership and information exchange between relevant parties in Agricultural Research for Development (ARD).

However it became evident right from the beginning of the European Initiative that the knowledge about each other concerning development-related activities within the different partner countries is very scarce which includes information about scientists, projects, institutions, events, publications etc. It also became evident that information exchange between all actors, e.g. within and between the European Commission and the Member States, would be fundamental and of vital importance for the success of this initiative.

As the Internet provides sound opportunities for facilitating exchange of information in the widest possible sense, the EIARD Members decided to develop a (meta) information system (EIARD-InfoSys) on the basis of a decentralised and multi-entry system which is equally adapted to the highly diversified research environment in Europe and to the requirements of a policy platform that is supported by a multitude of institutions and parties all over Europe.

Finally, the EIARD-InfoSys approach and principles are seeking to improve the sharing of information between ARD stakeholders. while endorsing the principles of decentralisation, subsidiarity and ownership as principle prerequisites of a sustainable European information management on ARD.

2. Literature Review

As the quantity of information on the World Wide Web multiplies rapidly, it will become increasingly difficult to retrieve information with reasonable precision and recall, using the major search and harvesting engines. Searching information today is essentially a process of matching the query terms to the words in a document. However, if the terms do not match, the required document will not be retrieved. Therefore, one of the greatest barriers to finding information is the difficulty of coming up with the right terminology (Milstead & Feldman, 1999a). In recent years there has been a focus on meta data in order to facilitate the navigation to web-based information sources (Cathrow, 1997). Meta data describes attributes of a resource like title, author, subject, publisher and so on, thus providing a road map for users to retrieve their information (Milstead & Feldman, 1999).

There exists a considerable number of Web-based gateways that use meta data and can be used to locate network-based resources in some particular subject area (Wagner, 1999; Arndt, 1997). The GeoServe project for example aims at increasing the availability of European Geographic Data (Von Rimscha, 1999). In the area of agriculture are also several examples. The AgNIC (Agriculture Network Information Center) network provides access to agriculture-related internet information (http://www.agnic.org/). It was established by an alliance of the US National Agricultural Library, land-grant universities, and other organisations committed to facilitating public access to agricultural and related information (http://www.agnic.org/). There are also link collections like ETFRN, the European Tropical Forest Research Network (http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/), providing access to tropical forestry information and meta information systems on ARD labelling information according to well-defined standards like EIARD-InfoSys (http://www.dainet.de/eiard/infosys).

With respect to the abundance of electronically available information several interest groups have started initiatives to define meta data standards and thesauri specific for their needs (Milstead & Feldman, 1999b, De Carvalho Moura et al., 1999). Projects like the Geographical Data Committee (FGDC) provide a common set of terminology and definitions for the documentation of digital geospatial data (http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/ metadata.html). Accordingly, the U.S. Geological Surveys Biological Resources Division has developed a biological profile that is used in documenting biological resource data and information (http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8/). In agriculture, there is also a need of a standardised vocabulary to describe subject specific internet sources. Although the FAO-agrovoc (http://www.fao.org/agrovoc/) exists as an international thesaurus for agriculture, as a bibliographic tool it is unsuitable for the description of internet sources. Therefore, EIARD-InfoSys started to define an agricultural meta data standard description with an international validity. This thesaurus also takes into account the recent efforts of several international groups (Dublin Core) to develop a generic meta data standard for on-line information (Weibel, 1999; Bearman et al, 1999). Compatibility with the Dublin Core Standard also facilitates the exchange with other specialised resource description groups world-wide and global co-operation with other regional meta information systems.

In the frame of the second phase of the EIARD-InfoSys project, in addition to the management of meta information, factual information like project activities, funding, institutions etc. will be made increasingly available from decentralised data holdings all over Europe. The overall goal is to support a single-search interface to geographically distributed and independently maintained data collections, which will not subsume any of the individual collections (Roszowski et al., 1998). This approach can be implemented by different technical concepts: by direct access to the databases knowing the database structure or by so-called query routing, where indexes of databases are created and searched (Kirriemuir et al.,1998). These strategies are already implemented in other internet information systems like the Isaac project (Roszowski et al., 1998) where collections of meta data are searchable as a single collection. Using this technology, EIARD-InfoSys will make the landscape of agricultural research for development more transparent and access to factual information much easier.

The Internet-based concept of EIARD-InfoSys builds on the central on-line registration of ‘meta information’ providing road maps to European agricultural information sources targeted to research for development in its broadest sense and promoting the development of a one window access to European ARD capacities. It is increasingly recognised that the overflow of information on the Internet requires navigation tools in order to structure the prevailing information and to support the user friendliness of the Internet environment. Meta information systems providing central access to decentralised web sites, databases and other information sources are on the one hand side appropriate tools to facilitate the access to scattered information, to ease navigation and retrieval of information and on the other hand to increase the visibility of all stakeholders, thus adding value to European capacities in ARD. Management concepts of decentralised information systems like EIARD-InfoSys are supporting co-operative principles of subsidiarity, ownership of the data and are relying on pronounced partnership development among the key actors.

Partnership development is equally important for the presently emerging ICT initiatives of southern research networks in order to progress on the mutual harmonisation of design, set-up and management of sub-regional and regional web-based information systems and to facilitate the dissemination of information through all types of media increasingly benefiting farmers in rural and remote areas.

The present InfoSys prototype has been developed along three broad lines of activities, focussing on the construction of a (1) meta database (sign-posting service) to link web-based agricultural information in a consistent system, a (2) communication function (editorial service) and the (3) gateway pillar, as third function to support co-operation and partnership development with the South.

The user-friendly homepage and navigation features supports the easy retrieval and access of the prevailing information sources providing a multiple-entry system (geographical, subjects, topics etc.) for a variety of potential users and stakeholders in ARD (graph 1). The present EIARD-InfoSys pilot layout is based on the experiences of the project partners, mainly the national nodes which participate in the development of this system.

Graph 1: EIARD-InfoSys homepage

The central feature of the EIARD-InfoSys sign-posting service is the construction of a meta database. The registration of URLs is supported by the development of applied cataloguing rules, the EIARD Data Catalogue (EDC). The EDC is based on Agris/Caris categories as well as Dublin Core guidelines aiming at developing a common standard to classify internet sources in ARD. User-friendly on-line registration facilities are already implemented to support the registration of URLs executed by national nodes in all EIARD Member Countries. Sign-posting is a central service and management tool of linking decentralised data holdings.

The rapid expansion of the Internet accelerating the flow of information in the public and private sector, the constant provision of new tools for business transactions, entertainment and the features for web-based co-operative work, information exchange and communication promote an increasing attractiveness of the Internet for various stakeholders. The up-coming use of the Internet as mass medium in all lines of the global societies also advances the development of user-friendly interfaces, new features like workspaces, multi-media application and, finally, supports the establishment of a global information market place. Especially the further commercialisation of the Internet is promoting the trend towards mass media comparable to newspapers, radio and TV. Globalisation is definitely enhanced by these developments taking into account all positive and negative side effects for our social structures in general.

However, the increasing information on the Internet increases also the complexity of navigation, access to useful information on clearly defined subject areas or special issues. Information brokerage as well as clearly delineated comprehensive information environments providing subject matter specialists with easy-to-retrieve, up-to-date information are urgently required to fully exploit the potential of the Internet in scientific development co-operation.

The EIARD-InfoSys sets great store by developing intelligent broker functions in order to compile, evaluate and interpret web-based information and to apply interactive discussion tools in the process of European policy development. In addition, the topics are linked to information on European institutions, experts and research project activities, etc.

Thus, the editorial service will compile factual information on expertise, research activities (projects) and capacities (institutions) of European organisations. The compiled information will be analysed in order to produce overviews and statistics for research management and policy support, providing deep insights in EU expertise and trends in research. However, the principle objective of the InfoSys "editorial function" is the provision of services to decision-making bodies in Europe and developing countries which increasingly require brokerage of information.

Moreover, during recent meetings of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) the vision associated with the Internet applications has been expressed as to create a Global Knowledge System (GKS) for ARD. How to mirror such a GKS on the Internet, benefiting the poor at the same time, will be the challenge of advanced web-based information management in the forthcoming decade.

Sub-regional and regional networks on ARD have emerged in the past ten years nearly all over the developing world as research is facing an increasingly complex environment between productivity increase, environmental destruction, rural poverty, decreasing prices, stagnating food production (in part of the world) and stagnating research funding. Enhanced co-operation in research networks (e.g. IICA, APAARI, FARA, EU Forum, GFAR), increased interdisciplinary research work, joint regional priority setting (SPAAR, ISNAR) and networking appeared to be an immediate reaction of the research community facing the above mentioned challenges.

The commitment of developing countries in regional and sub-regional research networks is generally strong and in terms of research planning and priority setting meanwhile far advanced. With respect to ICT, however, most networks are still poorly developed, though e-mail connectivity is abundant in most network member states. In Asia and Latin America the situation in ICT development is different as in many cases regional Internet networks exist already and efficient tools - as in the case of IICA, Latin America, for long distance learning - are already implemented. However, there appears still to be a strong need for training of personnel, support in web-based software adaptation (search engines, databases) and meta information system development as general entrances to and active participation in the global Internet information and communication market place. The EIARD-InfoSys partners like CTA, CIRAD contribute to the support of regional and sub-regional networks.

The EIARD-InfoSys specific objectives of the next phase are focussing on the application and construction of search engines for (1) query routing to distributed databases (2) cross database searches to compile factual information in one window (e.g. on research projects, institutions, funding), establishment of user profiles for better targeting of information services and support to thematic as well as regional research networks. In addition, advanced shared workspace software applications will be further adapted to the requirements of the communication functions within EIARD-InfoSys.

Scientific networking and interdisciplinary research work needs information about the different partners, needs information about who is doing what and at which location. Advanced information systems for networking need a strong user orientation and possibility of data exchange across formats, institutes, net-servers and geographical borders.

Strategies to strengthen information management in regional networks should focus on the generation and dissemination of knowledge on the levels of the international, regional and local scale in order to create transparency and an enabling environment for learning and data exchange. Thus future developments should strengthen especially regional information systems which might be catalysers but also intermediators between the international/ inter-regional and local scale. Regional information systems will definitely also need to focus on local information usage to solve local problems and provide feed-back facilities for the network members. At present the web-based information offer of regional information networks needs improvement of its information and communication facilities as well as an active participation of regional partner countries in order to meet the research network requirements and user demands to full satisfaction. EIARD-InfoSys might be a sound example for a regional ARD information system being prepared to share its experiences and technologies with other regional partners.

Cathro, Warwick. (1997). Metadata: An Overview.Services to Libraries Division at the Standards Australia Seminar, "Matching Discovery and Recovery", August 1997 (http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/cathro3.html)

Federal Geographic Data Committee. Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (FGDC-1) (http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/metadata.html)

Milstead, Jessica and Feldman, Susan (1999a). Metadata: Cataloging by Any Other Name. ONLINE, January 1999 (http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL1999/milstead1.html)

Milstead, Jessica and Feldman, Susan (1999b). Metadata Projects and Standards. ONLINE, January 1999 (http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL1999/milstead1.html)

National Committee on Information Technology Standards, Technical Committee, L8. (NCITS-1) http://speckle.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/html/x3l8/x3l8docs/sig9710.htm, (NCITS-2) http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8