Possible Role of CODATA in Facilitating Application of ICT in Societal Development

Krishan LalPresident, CODATA

&

Former Director

National Physical Laboratory

New Delhi, India

UN-GAID e-SDDC Launch Meeting, Atibaia, Sao Paulo, 7 May 2007

Outline

• CODATA• Role of CODATA in WISIS• Global Information Commons for e-Science• CODATA Task Groups having overlapping interests

with UN-GAID Plans• Preservation and development of traditional knowledge

bases: Indian scenario• ICT and School Level education• Networking of Expertise in different global regions

• An Interdisciplinary scientific committee of International Council for Science (ICSU) http://www.icsu.org

• Established in 1966 – Was born at Bombay (Mumbai) India

• Moved to France 1975

• An independent legal organization, which works inclose collaboration with ICSU and the ICSU family

• First General Assembly was held in 1968

ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology – CODATA

General Information

•Headquarters at 51, Blvd de Montmorency, 75016 Paris; Executive Director- Kathleen Cass

•Web site: http://www.codata.org

•Data Science Journalhttp://dsj.codataweb.org

ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology – CODATA

General Information

CODATA is a non governmental organization 24 Member Countries

15 International Scientific Unions as Members

4 Co-opted Scientific Organizations

13 Supporting Organizations (Industry, Government and Academia)

ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology – CODATA

General Information

Member Countries

• Brazil• Cameroon• Canada• Chinese Academy of

Sciences, Beijing• Chinese Academy located in

Taipei• Czech Republic• France*• Georgia• Germany*• India• Indonesia• Ireland* Associate Member

• Israel• Italy• Japan• Korea• Nigeria• Poland• Russia• Senegal• South Africa• Thailand• Ukraine• USA

CODATA Achieves its Mission through:

• Task Groups

• National Member Activities

• Participation in Important International Initiatives, eg WSIS

• Organizes Biennial International Conferences

• CODATA Electronic Data Science Journal

• Publications

• Workshops

• Studies and Reports

• Co-operation and Liaison with Other Scientific Organizations

Preparatory Phase: Geneva, Dec 2003

Final Phase: Tunis, November 2005

In December 2003, more than 172 countries participated in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) at Geneva

WSIS – The First PhaseCulmination in Geneva

In collaboration with ICSU and UNESCO, it held an International Workshop in UNESCO in March 2003 on “The Role of Science in the Information Society”

A nine point Agenda for Action came from this Workshop

Declaration of Principles and Plan of ActionAdopted by 175 countries

Paragraph 7:

“Science has a central role in the development of the Information Society.”

Article 10 of the Agenda for Action: Emphasis on “Access to Information and Knowledge,” and

Article 23 recognizes the important role of “e-Science.”

WSIS First Phase:

Geneva, December 2003

Major CODATA activities between Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005)

• Special Session at 19th International Conference of CODATA, Nov 2004, Berlin

• International Workshop on “Creating the Information Commons for e-Science: Toward Institutional Policies and Guidelines for Action” Paris, 1-2 Sep 2005

• Three Sessions at the World Summit on Information Society, Tunis, November 2005

ICSU,ICSTI, INASP, UNESCO, and TWAS, in collaboration of the OECD

Partners

A Significant AchievementA Significant Achievement

Helped in firming up the new initiative on Global Information Commons for Science after discussions from legal, economic and other perspectives

CODATA, together with its partners CODATA, together with its partners had been at the forefront in had been at the forefront in consolidating the point of view of an consolidating the point of view of an important stakeholder namely the important stakeholder namely the scientific community for the WSIS. scientific community for the WSIS.

President, CODATA, Professor Shuichi President, CODATA, Professor Shuichi Iwata, reported in the Main Plenary Session Iwata, reported in the Main Plenary Session of the Summit:of the Summit:

Launching of a new initiative to create the Global Information Commons for Science

Professor Shuichi, President CODATA

addressing the Eighth Plenary Session of theWorld Summit on the Information Society, 18 November 2005 , Tunis

Photograph by Prof Liu Chuang

““Science helped to create the Science helped to create the Information Society—it can now help Information Society—it can now help extend that society to all.”extend that society to all.”

Iwata, S., and R.S. Chen. 2005. Science and the Digital Divide (editorial). Science 310 (5747, 21 October): 405.

• CODATA has the potential to serve with other organizations as a vehicle of development in the least developed regions, particularly in increasing the quality and spread of education.

• There is a great scope in integrating traditional knowledge base with the main stream in a transparent and ethical manner.

 

Challenges Facing CODATAChallenges Facing CODATA

CODATA Task Groups

• Access to Biological Collection Data

• Anthropometric Data and Engineering

• Comprehensive Information System on Natural Disaster Mitigation

• Data Sources in Asian and Oceanic Countries

• Data Sources for Sustainable Development in SADC Countries

• Exchangeable Materials Data Representation to Support Scientific Research and Education

• Fundamental Constants

• Gas Hydrates

• Global Species Data Networks

• Polar Year Data Policy and Management

• Preservation of and Access to S&T Data in Developing Countries

Indian Experience:A Glimpse

  Country Rankings among All Countries and All Fields

(10 Year Rankings – Top 3 Countries Viz-a-Viz India)

Country

Papers Citations

Citations

Per Paper

Totals Rank* Total Rank* Total Rank*

USA 2,758,037 1 34,345,536 1 12.45 6

Japan 699,840 2 4,922,466 4 7.03 39

Germany 632,261 3 5,802,656 3 8.64 21

India 184,086 13 595,627 21 3.24 119

*Rank Among ALL Countries in terms of number of papers.Source: ESI (January 1, 1994 – August 31, 2004)

Turning Digital Divide into Digital Opportunity……….

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

Total

pape

rs

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

Indian

pape

rs

Total papers

Indian papers

Total Top ESI papers Viz-a-Viz India’s Contribution in10 Years Period (1994-2004)

Total Indian Journals :12,000 (appr)Technical Reports (no bibliographic control) : 8236

Theses and Dissertations (2001-2002)No. of Doctoral Degrees Awarded (which implies no. of theses added

during one year) : 11,451 Unpublished Research Findings

Patents (2000-2001) Applications Filed Patents Granted Patents In-force 8387 1318

8025Conferences (1993-94 around 600

conference/year; present estimate 800 –1000/year)

•Standards No. of Standards in Force as on 31st March 2001 : 17600

During 2000-01 BIS formulated (new & revised) : 319 •Special Collections

Turning Digital Divide into Digital Opportunity……….

IISc. Bangalore (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/)

INSA (http://drtc.isibang.ac.in:9080/insa)

IIT, Mumbai http://www.library.iitb.ac.in/etd/

CSIR laboratories (National Chemical Laboratory) http://dspace.ncl.res.in/dspace/index.jsp

Others

Institutional Repositories

Content Creation : Initiatives

Digital Archives

Institutional E-Print Archives

Efforts in setting up of indigenous data centers and Infrastructure for linking with major international data centers are growing up at a fast rate

National Collection of Industrial micro-organism (NCIM) (http://www.ncl-india.org/ncim/)

A national facility dedicated to isolation, preservation and distribution of authentic cultures

Starting with just 400 cultures, the NCIM holds 3700 cultures today

Indian Biodiversity informatics (http://www.ncbi.org.in)

NCL Centre for Biodiversity Informatics (NCBI) is an effort to

collect, collate, analyze, predict and disseminate knowledge about Indian biota and its environ

Indian MEDLARS Centre : IndMED ( http://indmed.nic.in/ )

Web based Indian Biomedical database

A Bibliographic database of Indian biomedical journals

Indigenous Data Centres and Infrastructure

National Health Information Collaboration (NHIC) (http://www.nhicindia.ernet.in/)

A  knowledge management tool to serve as a one-point source for authentic and relevant health information on all health topics

Health InterNetwork India (HIN India) WEB based Initiatives -WHO/ ICMR project

( http://www.hin.org.in/ )

Targeted to serve health service providers, researchers and policy makers

Portal for Indian health data and information facilitated by the Heath InterNetwork India Project, which jointly with Indian Council of Medical Research holds the copyright of the application software

Software available to Countries and non-profit institutions for non-commercial use

Indigenous Data Centres and Infrastructure

URDIP: CSIR Unit for Research and Development for Information Products (http://www.urdip.res.in/)

Open access to Indian patents and medicinal plants, pollution technologies, CSIR rural technologies, ETD and research reports

Patent Information Search (http://patinfo.nic.in/ )

Most comprehensive databases on the Patent Bibliography.

Database known as EPIDOS( European Patent Information and Document Service) published by European Patent Office (EPO)

EPO has been receiving the bibliography of all the patents filed and granted in approximately 71 countries since 1968.

Database contains over 33 millions references from 1968 onwards

Almost 3 millions references are added each year.

Gateway services for open access resources

SciGate: Science Information Portal (IISc) (http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ )

AeroInfo: Aerospace Virtual Library (NAL)

Indigenous Data Centres and Infrastructure

http://www.ncl-india.org/ncim/

http://www.ncbi.org.in

http://indmed.nic.in/

http://www.healthinternetwork.net/ http://www.hin.org.in/

http://www.nhicindia.ernet.in/

(http://www.urdip.res.in/)

http://patinfo.nic.in/

http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/

Growing trend in India to bring out electronic journals and making them available globally

Science Academies in India set the stage and showed way for making scholarly publications available online for facilitating FREE ACCESS

Few others following

INSA Journals - full-text of all journals available online for Free, Unlimited & Unrestricted Access http://www.insa.ac.in

Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), - http://www.ias.ac.in National MedIND : http://medind.nic.in/ (covering Biomedical journals from

India)

E-Journal Portals

http://www.insa.ac.in

http://203.200.90.6/tkdl/LangDefault/common/Home.asp?GL=Eng

http://www.vidyanidhi.org.in/

http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/indest/

http://www.ugc.ac.in/new_initiatives/infonet.html

http://unicat.inflibnet.ac.in/econ/mindex.htm

http://202.54.99.7/ejournal/ejournalhome1.htm

Several proposal are at the conceptual stage to promote digital archiving and content creation and information access/dissemination.

National Digital Library (NDL) -DIT, GOI

National Digital Library of Learning Objects by CEC an Inter-University project of University Grants Commission

•Digital India •Knowledge Portal Knowledge creation, Knowledge creation,

preservation, access, preservation, access, and and management management

Vision in the Making

Introduction of ICT Technology in School Education

• Education is key to development• Quality of education is of great concern in

developing societies• Stress on training strategies for teachers• Indian experience

Computer related corporations have many serious activities,e.g. WIPRO, Intel, etc Major commercial initiatives to bring digital

technologies in schools, e.g. Smart Class, Maths Guru

“Knowledge is good but it availeth not, practice the truth that the man there is

thou.”

Gospel of BuddhaPaul Carus,

National Book Trust of India, New Delhi

SummarySummary

• CODATA and its Activities

• CODATA’s Role in WSIS

• CODATA Task Groups focused on Developing Regions

• A glimpse of main Indian activities

• To explore newer linkages for applications of knowledge base of its members for development purposes

Thank You

Dhanyavad