EU Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) report
The VALERIE project and “ask-Valerie.eu” (VALERIE’s search and stakeholder engagement tool) appear in the newly published EU SCAR (Standing Committee on Agricultural Research) report on “Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems Towards the Future: A Foresight Paper”. In chapter 5, “The Role of E-Science in Agriculture: How E-Science Technology Assists Participation in Agricultural Research”, the development of “ask-Valerie.eu” is presented as a key step in improving the flow of information between practitioners and researchers.
Follow the link: https://ec.europa.eu/research/scar/index.cfm?pg=home; or download the report here.
Chapter 5 - ‘The Role of E-Science in Agriculture: How E-Science Technology Assists Participation in Agricultural Research’
Introduction
The objective of this chapter is to analyse how e-science can increase the participation of practitioners and researchers in agricultural research, and hence increase the mutual impact of such research. In this chapter, we discuss the need for participation, and define four types of participation that are possible in agricultural research. We sketch the form that these types of participation can take in agricultural research, and the relevance of e-science for these participations. For each type of participation, we select relevant cases that already exist in agricultural domains, and discuss the e-science technology involved. The focus is on participation, and as such we will not include e-science tools that do not directly facilitate participation, such as high performance computing, algorithms for precision agriculture, lab management systems, visualisation, etc. Based on what we have discovered, we will identify a number of issues and opportunities relating to the use of e-science in agriculture. Finally, we will conclude with the steps that can be taken to more fully realise the potential of e-science for encouraging participation in agricultural research.
Most of the material in this study is based on an analysis of available information on the Web and from literature. We have also built on our experiences with e-science in projects such as the EU FP7 Valerie project and the Dutch COMMIT/eFoodLab project.