l.martinez-uribe's blog

The application for IASSIST Fellows is now closed. Over 40 applications from 23 different countries have been received with the following number of applications by region:

• 23 Latin America
• 12 Africa
• 6 Asia

The Fellows Committee is now working to evaluate the applications and will make the decisions in the following weeks. Good luck to all participants.

The IASSIST Fellows Program is now accepting applications for financial support to attend the IASSIST 2012 conference in Washington [http://www.iassist2012.org/], from data professionals from countries with emerging economies who are developing and managing data infrastructures at their home institutions.

Please be aware that funding is not intended to cover the entire cost of attending the conference. The applicant’s home institution must provide some level of financial support to supplement the IASSIST Fellow award. Strong preference will be given to first time participants, and applicants from Latin-American countries. Only fully completed applications will be accepted. Applicants submitting a paper for the conference will be given priority consideration for funding.

 You may apply for funding via this form.

For more information, to apply for funding or nominate a person for a Fellowship, please send an email to the Fellows Committee chair, Luis Martínez-Uribe.

The Latin Engagement Action Group have come up with a number of outreach activities aimed at supporting data professionals from Spanish and Portuguese speaking educational institutions, namely:

1. Research Data Management Webinars (complete with IASSIST contribution) for Spanish/Portuguese data specialists (http://www.recolecta.net/buscador/webminars.jsp)

Stuart Macdonald and Luis Martínez-Uribe in collaboration with Alicia López Medina (UNED, Spain), the Spanish Agency of Science and Technology (FECYT) and the network of Spanish repositories RECOLECTA have organised a programme of webinars in 3 strands starting in October to discuss RDM issues:

Strand 1 is dedicated to Research Data Management Strategy (presentations from FECYT, RedIris, Simon Hodson (JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) Programme Manager)

Strand 2 - RDM Tools and models (presentations from Sarah Jones on DAF/DMP online (DCC) and Stuart Macdonald (EDINA) on IASSIST Latin Engagement, RDM at Edinburgh & Research Data MANTRA 

Strand 3 - Research Data Management Experiences (presentations from Kate McNeil-Harmen (MIT) , Luis Martinez Uribe (Institute Juan March), colleagues from University of Porto

Several members of IASSIST have been invited and the work of the group will be presented in order to keep promoting the organization to colleagues in Spain, Portugal and Latin-America.

2. Preparation of a Latin-American session in next IASSIST annual conference in collaboration with outreach committee

Organise another Latin-American session at IASSIST 2012 (complete with NGO representation) led by Bobray Bordelan (Princeton). Liaise with the outreach to fund and invite data professional colleagues from Latin America to participate in this session.

3. Spanish and Portuguese translation of the main pages of the IASSIST site - May 2012

Working with the IASSIST web editor Robin Rice to scope and implement (voluntary) translation of the main landing pages on the IASSIST website (e.g. Home page, About page, Becoming a member if IASSIST, FAQ, IASSIST at a Glance, About IQ, Instruction for Authors)

Image: Toledo by Pat Barker on Flickr, CC-BY-NC licence