BOOK Launch: Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Data Challenges for Agricultural Research and Development

This Open Access book provides the first systematic overview of existing challenges and opportunities for responsible data linkage, and a cutting-edge assessment of which steps need to be taken to ensure that plant data are ethically shared and used for the benefit of ensuring global food security – one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The volume focuses on the contemporary contours of such challenges through sustained engagement with current and historical initiatives and discussion of best practices for ensuring responsible plant data linkage.

The volume is divided into four sections that include case studies of plant data use and linkage in the context of particular research projects, breeding programs, and historical research. It addresses technical challenges of data linkage in developing key tools, standards and infrastructures, and examines governance challenges of data linkage in relation to socioeconomic and environmental research and data collection. Finally, the last section addresses issues raised by new data production and linkage methods for the inclusion of agriculture’s diverse stakeholders.

This book brings together leading experts in data curation, data governance and data studies from a variety of fields, including data science, plant science, agricultural research, science policy, data ethics and the philosophy, history and social studies of plant science.

A virtual launch event with contributing authors will be held online from 14.00-15.00 GMT.

The book can be accessed here

This volume has been published in open access through the generous support of the Alan Turing Institute.

Register via EventBrite here

Rescheduled from 25 November 2022