LIBSENSE-Connect 2023 - Nigeria

Africa/Lagos
NITDA IT Hub (University of Lagos)

NITDA IT Hub

University of Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria
Omo Oaiya (WACREN), Paul Walk (COAR / Antleaf), Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos)
Description

LIBSENSE-Connect is a comprehensive and interactive program designed to empower African software and infrastructure developers with the knowledge and skills to embrace open science principles and practices. The program aims to foster a more inclusive and collaborative research ecosystem by building the technical capacities to develop infrastructure that promotes transparency, accessibility, and reproducibility of research outputs. 

Through a series of hands-on workshops and expert-led sessions, LIBSENSE-Connect delves into key open science topics to offer practical insights into leveraging metadata, technical standards, and repository platforms to enhance information exchange, discovery, and data sharing. The program emphasises adherence to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to create a more connected and efficient research landscape. 

Target Participants:

LIBSENSE-Connect aims to bring together leading experts, researchers, software developers and practitioners from diverse fields to share their insights and experiences, fostering a vibrant community of open science enthusiasts.

Participants for this workshop must: 

  • be based in an African country 
  • have a working knowledge of English
  • be technically competent to a certain level (determined through information provided in the registration form) 
  • preferably have a relevant project they are willing to describe and discuss openly in the workshop. 

Successful applicants need to be able to use a (free) WACREN user account for the LIBSENSE-Connect GitLab repository.

Logistics

  • Full sponsorship (travel and welfare) for the first participant from WACREN members in good standing, and welfare only for additional participants.
  •  Welfare only for participants from other WACREN Members. 
  • Allowances for dinners and expenses for local Nigerian participants. 
  • Lunches and coffee breaks will be provided during the workshop.

Exceptions will be considered for qualified female applicants. 

    • 09:00 09:05
      Welcome 5m
      Speaker: Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos)
    • 09:05 09:45
      Introductions 40m
    • 09:45 10:15
      LIBSENSE-Connect 30m

      About the program, its aspirations and community participation opportunities

      Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)
    • 10:15 10:30
      Overview of the workshop 15m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 10:30 11:00
      Presentation: Four Pillars of Open Science 30m

      This presentation will introduce four "pillars" of open science:
      - open data
      - open source code
      - open access to papers
      - open peer review

      It will not discuss the reasons/policy/value of open science but will focus on how these four pillars are implemented.

      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 11:00 11:30
      Coffee Break and Networking 30m
    • 11:30 13:00
      Discussion: How can these four pillars be supported in Africa? 1h 30m

      This discussion includes the "clinic", where one (or more) of the participants will be invited to describe their project, raising any issue they would particularly like to focus on. They will have been primed to do this in the pre-workshop activities. We will try to ensure that this is relevant to the general topic of Workshop Day 1.

      The whole group will consider the issues raised and offer suggestions. This will be a discussion led by the workshop facilitators but with the encouragement of contribution from all participants.

      Speakers: Omo Oaiya (WACREN), Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 13:00 14:00
      Lunch 1h
    • 14:00 14:15
      Recap 15m

      Summary of the morning's discussion

    • 14:15 15:00
      Presentation: Machine Interoperability 45m
      • Design for users, developers and machines - Machines are first-order users too!
      • Why (machine-readable) metadata matters
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 15:00 15:30
      Coffee Break and Networking 30m
    • 15:30 16:30
      Exercise: FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIP) 1h

      Group work on a particular service, domain or context

      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 16:30 17:00
      Summing up Day 1 30m
      Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)
    • 09:00 09:30
      Recap of day 1 30m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (COAR / Antleaf)
    • 09:30 10:30
      Presentation: Overview of important infrastructure services 1h

      This will explain how some functions are more efficiently delivered as centralised, shared infrastructure and introduce some important types of infrastructure services.

      Speakers: Paul Walk (Antleaf), Omo Oaiya (WACREN)
    • 10:30 11:00
      Infrastructure Services Clinic 30m

      This clinic will be dedicated to infrastructure services and participants will be invited to raise any issue they would particularly like to focus on.

      Speakers: Omo Oaiya (WACREN), Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 11:00 11:30
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 11:30 13:00
      Group Exercise: Hacking APIs 1h 30m

      Participants will form small groups and perform exercises on various APIs from infrastructure services.

      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 13:00 14:00
      Lunch 1h
    • 14:00 14:30
      Summary of the morning's API hacking 30m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 14:30 15:00
      Presentation: Overview of significant repository software 30m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 15:00 15:30
      Coffee break 30m
    • 15:30 16:30
      AI for and from Open Repositories: Opportunities and Challenges 1h

      Recent advancements in AI, such as the availability of large language models (LLMs) and the ever-increasing amount of open access research papers, are creating new opportunities for improving how research is conducted, managed, organised, disseminated and used. This talk will first introduce CORE, a not-for-profit service that harvests openly available research papers from repositories, focusing on CORE’s ingestion pipeline and how papers in CORE can be accessed for machine processing.

      Petr will then talk about a range of scenarios in which his team has been applying AI models over this scholarly content, including question-answering systems utilising LLMs (CORE-GPT), rapid systematic reviews and citation intent classification for research assessment, reflecting on the opportunities to improve research workflows and challenges in using AI responsibly. In concluding the talk with examples of using machine learning to organise research knowledge in repositories and libraries, Petr will argue that AI in research should not only be seen as the future but also as the present. A Q&A will follow the presentation.

      Speaker: Prof. Petr Knoth (The Open University, UK)
    • 16:30 17:00
      Summing up day 2 30m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 09:00 09:30
      Recap of Day 2 30m
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 09:30 10:00
      Community Clinic 30m
      Speakers: Omo Oaiya (WACREN), Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 10:00 11:00
      Summing up and feedback from participants 1h
      Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)
    • 11:00 11:30
      Coffee break 30m
    • 11:30 12:30
      Next steps for the LIBSENSE-Connect programme 1h
      Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)
    • 12:30 13:30
      Lunch 1h
    • 13:30 15:00
      Fostering Open Science Communities on Campus I 1h 30m

      Library and research stakeholders will gather with the participants in the workshop from the University of Lagos to discuss working with LIBSENSE to launch an open science community on campus.

      Speakers: Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos), Omo Oaiya (WACREN)
    • 15:00 15:30
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 15:30 17:00
      Fostering Open Science Communities on Campus II 1h 30m
      Speakers: Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos), Omo Oaiya (WACREN)