The AGRIS Country Hub in the Republic of Moldova in 2022

The Scientific Agricultural Library of Technical University of Moldova (TUM) became an AGRIS Country Hub in 2020, acting as a focal point for AGRIS in the country. This year the collaboration has focused on the consolidation of the AGRIS Country Hub in the country.

Through AGRIS, FAO promotes the exchange of information and data to enable the discovery, reuse and sharing of scientific research in food and agriculture. In line with these principles, the AGRIS Country Hub in the Republic of Moldova organized several activities such as, among others, two AGRIS regional trainings, an AGRIS outreach campaign, and an online training about AGRIS and the implementation of sustainable initiatives on Open Science in agriculture.

These activities focused on several aspects, as following: 

• Raising awareness about AGRIS, by promoting its use among researchers, and demonstrating to institutions the benefits of becoming members of AGRIS. The related activities contributed to improving the collaboration of the AGRIS Country Hub with national libraries and publishers, and to increasing the number of existing bibliographic records about scientific publications in food and agriculture from the Republic of Moldova in AGRIS. As result, more than 6,000 bibliographic records were uploaded in the AGRIS database. Additionally, these activities contributed to enhancing awareness about the existing global scientific publishing framework, and providing capacities to access agricultural research outputs in the Republic of Moldova.   
• Specific training activities aimed at expanding the researchers' skills about the search strategies in AGRIS. Researchers learned about the latest developments in AGRIS such as the AGRIS Open Data Set, and these new initiatives represented a crucial step in increasing the visibility and accessibility of data providers’ resources in enriching their own data.
• The AGRIS Country Hub of the Republic of Moldova developed skill-enhancing activities by training the library staff on how to provide assistance to users, reinforcing skills and competences of users on AGRIS.