From the first day of 2017 until the summer of 2018 a consortium gathered two research performing organizations INRA (FR) and WUR (NL) and Agroknow (GR) a private company. More than 100 stakeholders were involved in the elaboration of this roadmap through the workshops and the project methodology to build a common knowledge, foresight and recommendations to achieve this vision. 

The vision of the project is until 2030 agri-food systems and businesses to produce healthy nutritious foods for all and since they use and create related knowledge, must be supported by open science-based food knowledge systems to stimulate further innovation and accelerate impact.  Through this knowledge system, all researchers should be able to:

• openly collaborate with relevant stakeholders
• create novel systems approaches that harness research
• put in action research that is fully knowledge-driven, and based on the principle of transparent data and information that allow researchers to rapidly discover, aggregate, integrate, and analyse different types of data and information sources
• embrace work approaches that are most likely to accelerate impact

Agri-food science and innovation will benefit significantly from such a shared knowledge ecosystem. This shared knowledge will be produced and used by diverse users not only academic researchers but also farmers, the industry, extension services and citizens. A shared global data space will help to build the infrastructures that will open useful information to all these stakeholders and propel the agri-food sector forward.

Embracing digitization, transparency and collaboration for this ambitious endeavour will generate significant benefits such as:

• Speeding the pace of knowledge circulation
• Increasing spill-over of useful new knowledge to the economy
• Promoting opening access to knowledge – the FAIR principles
• Promoting citizens’ engagement in science and research to enable mass innovation

The transition of the research approach towards a systemic, integrated, multidisciplinary and global approach needs to be accelerated.

These are the actions will support this transformation: 

1. We need to secure universal knowledge access and promotion to our community

Data, information and knowledge today exist as an unconnected ecosystem, whose power will be greatly magnified if similar efforts are linked in a common approach

2. Researchers need to be able to easily explore, integrate and simulate data

There is also a need to regulate database management rates whether the data are used by academic scientists, private firms or the non-profit sector, especially if data by NGOs, who cannot afford the cost of ongoing database management

3. Farmer is a partner

The power of data produced by farmers and by land observation, which includes (but is not limited to) precision agriculture needs to be harnessed

4. Work closely with the equipment manufacturers

To establish common principles and standards for data exchange, we need to start with research planning, data production – in the lab, on the field or at the observational level

5. Keep it simple across data sources

Standards need to be open and shared, inter and cross-disciplinary, and co-defined with communities to ensure their adoption

6. It is not just about Europe. Think big.

The importance of Big Agricultural Sciences in the Global South must be understood. European Initiatives need to be integrated with those of G20 and G77 countries

7. Adopt Machine Readable

Machine-readable means for encoding licenses for data and information and for encoding provenance of data and information will be adopted

8. Grow your skills

Cornerstone is the development of the necessary skills and capacity so that all partners and stakeholders in this endeavour can achieve this endeavour can achieve this Vision 2030

You can read the final document of our Roadmap here 

You can also comment and provide further feedback at eROSA Roadmap Paper [Living Document] here

*This roadmap is the main output of the e-ROSA project “e-infrastructure Roadmap for Open Science in Agriculture” funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 730988.*