As part of the scientific projects supported by the French Embassy in Cuba, a two-day training course given by Pascal Aventurier, researcher at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) on capacity building for sharing data from Research and Open Science took place at the University of Havana (UH).
This training was attended by 20 people, including scientists in biology and information science. social sciences, and psychology but also university training managers and executives from the Ministry of Higher Education.
The workshop was provided by Pascal Aventurier, head of the Scientific Information department of the IRD (Research Institute for Development) and member of the network of experts in Open Science of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research and Professor Yohannis Marti Director of Scientific and Technical Information at UH.
Various topics were covered, including an introduction to open science and research data management, an introduction to writing a Research Data Management Plan, publishing research data.
This workshop made it possible to discuss the problems encountered in managing data, storing them and making use of them while respecting the ethical and legal framework and thus favoring the transfer of knowledge, and good practices adopted by the IRD, to a broader community of HU researchers.
For the University of Havana, this action is an opportunity for the different organizational sectors to value and apply better management of their research data.
For Franco-Cuban scientific collaboration, it is also an opportunity for Cuban partners to better master the concepts around research data and open science to better participate in European programs, for example;
This initiative will also contribute to the national macro-project Tarea Vida, in which professors and researchers from the University of Havana have an important participation. Tarea Vida is part of the Cuban state’s plan to address climate change on a multidisciplinary scientific basis.
This training could be renewed or evolve towards more specialized modules, actions could also be put in place to establish a policy on the management of research data, set up data warehouses or dedicated support services for research data, research. Indeed, the absence of data policies, assistance to researchers or appropriate tools are very significant obstacles to good data management.
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