This blended training focuses on the management, publication, and quality control of marine biodiversity and geospatial data. After participating in self-paced online courses, participants will benefit from this hands-on training to:

• Discuss and solve challenges with current data input
• Identify critical ocean knowledge gaps in different African regions
• Establish and/or strengthen data quality control procedures
• Have clear guidance to publish data for inclusion in scientific papers and data repositories
• Contribute to African regional nodes for platforms such as the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS).

Venue

Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) - Mombasa, Kenya

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course the participants should be able to:

• Gain insights into data governance principles, including privacy, security, and ethical considerations.
• Acquire knowledge of data citation and attribution through learning about best practices for acknowledging data sources and providing appropriate credit.
• Gain knowledge on how to access and contribute to global datasets as participants in ODINAFRICA and interconnect national portals with regional and global systems
• Build and strengthen skills in data management, standardisation, and documentation, and  knowledge of when and how to apply appropriate metadata standards such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Darwin Core (DwC), and JSON-LD through the schema.org framework
• Learn to publish high-quality (meta)data to the Africa Coastal and Marine Atlas (ACMA)
• Understand Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) and their value in published data papers.

Note: Data that the workshop participants upload into ACMA will be distributed to the ODIS Federation, and be available via ODIS-compatible search interfaces and Google Dataset Search

Target audience

Preference will be given to data managers in National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs) and Associated Data Units (ADUs) in Africa, affiliated to UNESCO IODE.

Pre-requisites

Participants should:

• Bring their laptop and sample data from their institutions
• Be familiar with tools for working with the spatial and other data holdings in their home institutions.
• Prior knowledge of ocean data, including marine biodiversity data.

Participants will:

• Be required to complete online self-paced learning activities before the onsite classes.
• Be expected to familiarize themselves with the following material:
  Documentation for the GeoNode platform (https://geonode-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/organizational/about.html)
  OBIS Manual (https://manual.obis.org/)
  Guidance for the implementation of the ODIS-architecture (https://book.oceaninfohub.org/)

• Install the recommended software: Web browser (Chrome, Firefox), Text editor (Notepad++), and QGIS

Course content

Module 1: General introduction and presentation from data managers and/or National Oceanographic Data Centers

Module 2: Applying FAIR Principles to Ocean Data Management

Module 3: Guidelines for publishing data, metadata, and research papers,

Module 4: Data cleaning, standardisation, documentation, and archiving

Module 5: Linking into available resources for national, regional, and global data portals

Module 6: Final review and next steps

**All modules will contain hands-on work to apply course principles to participants’ supplied data

Language of instruction: English

Instructors

Course Duration, Synchronous Sessions, and Format

The course will take place face-to-face between 23 to 26 September, 2024, with a duration of approximately 32 hours.

The course has an online learning component to be completed before the onsite classes of approximately 12h (to be available in the OTGA e-learning platform from late-August until the beginning of the course).

Application process and selection criteria

A limited number of seats (20) are available. Please complete the online application form available on this LINK. The applications start on 18 June 2024. The deadline to submit the application is 30 June 2024  (23:59 CEST: Central European Summer Time). EXTENDED till 07 July 2024 23:59 CEST.

UNESCO is committed to promoting equal access principles. Applications from minority or underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.

Contacts

• Course Coordinators: John Ngatia jn.ndarathi@unesco.org
• OTGA Secretariat: ioc.training@unesco.org

Costs

Free of charge. There are no tuition fees.

The course organizers will cover costs of travel, accommodation, local transport, and food during the classes for a limited number of participants. Eligibility requires meeting the pre-requisites and target audience.

The instructors will give the course voluntarily.

Cancellation policy

In the event of cancellation of the course by the OTGA or its affiliates, we will provide notification of cancellation at least 7 days prior to the course date. In the event of cancellation by the attendee, we should receive notification of cancellation at least 7 days prior to the course date.