LIBSENSE-Connect 2023 - Nigeria

6 Nov 2023, 09:00 → 8 Nov 2023, 17:30 Africa/Lagos

NITDA IT Hub (University of Lagos)

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

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. 

Monday, 6 November

09:00 → 09:05 Welcome

Speaker: Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos)

09:05 → 09:45 Introductions

09:45 → 10:15 LIBSENSE-Connect

About the program, its aspirations and community participation opportunities

Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)

10:15 → 10:30 Overview of the workshop

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

10:30 → 11:00 Presentation: Four Pillars of Open Science

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

11:30 → 13:00 Discussion: How can these four pillars be supported in Africa?

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

14:00 → 14:15 Recap

Summary of the morning's discussion

14:15 → 15:00 Presentation: Machine Interoperability

• 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

15:30 → 16:30 Exercise: FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIP)

Group work on a particular service, domain or context

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

16:30 → 17:00 Summing up Day 1

Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)

Tuesday, 7 November

09:00 → 09:30 Recap of day 1

Speaker: Paul Walk (COAR / Antleaf)

09:30 → 10:30 Presentation: Overview of important infrastructure services

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

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

11:30 → 13:00 Group Exercise: Hacking APIs

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

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:30 Summary of the morning's API hacking

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

14:30 → 15:00 Presentation: Overview of significant repository software

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

15:00 → 15:30 Coffee break

15:30 → 16:30 AI for and from Open Repositories: Opportunities and Challenges

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

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

Wednesday, 8 November

09:00 → 09:30 Recap of Day 2

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

09:30 → 10:00 Community Clinic

Speakers: Omo Oaiya (WACREN), Paul Walk (Antleaf)

10:00 → 11:00 Summing up and feedback from participants

Speaker: Paul Walk (Antleaf)

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 → 12:30 Next steps for the LIBSENSE-Connect programme

Speaker: Omo Oaiya (WACREN)

12:30 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 15:00 Fostering Open Science Communities on Campus I

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

15:30 → 17:00 Fostering Open Science Communities on Campus II

Speakers: Victor Odumuyiwa (NITDA IT Hub (NItHub), University of Lagos), Omo Oaiya (WACREN)