>> These wiki pages are work in progress <<
[Please read the instructions and suggestions at the bottom of the page before using the Wiki]
DRAFT 1.2, March 2009
As well as being high quality, public good research outputs should be as widely available, accessible and applicable as possible.
This document outlines proven pathways by which the outputs of agricultural research can be made truly available, accessible and applicable.
Pathway 1: Advocate the benefits of the digital accessibility of content
Pathway 2: Develop an Institutional Repository (IR) for digital content
Pathway 3: Deposit research content in your Institutional Repository (IR)
Pathway 4: Digitize older outputs, to be 'born again' digital
Pathway 5: Conform to international standard metadata and vocabularies
Pathway 6: Give your metadata high visibility with search engines
Pathway 7: Make content accessible through AGRIS, CABI and preference schemes
Pathway 8: Make content available through global services like Google Scholar and Google Books
Pathway 9: Work with publishers who have flexible policies on open access
Pathway 10: Make content accessible across web, email, phone
Pathway 11: Beyond articles and reports: Use video and images
Pathway 12: Beyond articles and reports: try out 'social' media
Pathway 13: Publish and promote outputs with newsfeeds
Pathway 14: Set up added value services that query across platforms
Pathway 15: License content to encourage use and re-use
Pathway 16: Analyse how your IR/websites are being used. Put this knowledge to use
Pathway 17: Plan for sustainability of systems and content
Pathway 18: Communicate research messages to the mainstream and specialist media and other 'users'
Pathway 19: Communicate research messages for web, email, phone
Pathway 20: Repackage research to make it more 'usable' for other stakeholders?
Pathway 21: Engage with partners in networks for innovation
Pathway 22: Embed knowledge sharing along the research cycle
Pathway 23: Link knowledge with action to make research applicable
Wikis allow different authors to work on the same collection of pages.
Each wiki has a homepage that has first-level links to the main pages that in turn link to other pages and so on.
Wiki pages also have a Table of Contents automatically created based on the headings in the page.
Headings of different levels are very important in wikis as they define the structure of the document and create a hierarchical ToC. The headings also define dirrefent sections that can be edited singularly. In order to edit a paragraph, it is always advisable to edit the single section where the paragraph is rather than the entire page.
You can create headings of different levels by prepending and appending two or more equals (=) to the heading. E.g. ===Introduction=== creates a 3rd-level bold heading. [You cannot create a first-level heading: that is reserved for the page title].
Each wiki page has 5 clickable icons at the top right corner.
The first icon links to the homepage of the wiki, the second one reloads the page, the third one allows you to edit the whole page, the fourth one displays the various versions of the page since it was first created (everytime a user saves the page, a new version is created) and the fifth one allows to download a basic HTML version of the page.
Each wiki page also has two links at the top: "Homepage" and "Discussion". The first one links back to the homepage while the second one links to the "Discussion" section about the active page.
Discussions are very useful for: a) commenting parts of the documents and asking for clarifications; b) discussing radical or massive changes: applying radical changes to a wiki page without prior discussion might make the page unusable by the other co-authors.
Formatting: use the formatting bar for basic formatting (blod, italics, headers). While you edit, you will see the WikiMedia markup: you have to save or click on Preview in order to see the final formatting.
Two additional useful types of formatting you might need are unordered and ordered lists.
Ordered lists: one list item per line, preceded by # (two or more # to indent)
# first item
# second item
(one linefeed ends the list)
Unordered lists: one list item per line, preceded by * (two or more * to indent)
* first
** first, first
** first, second
* second
Look here for more formatting options: MediaWiki basic formatting rules.
About MediaWiki: MediaWiki User's guide.