Meet the AGROVOC Editorial community

An interview with Ekaterina Kulakova, Chief Specialist of the Group of Scientific Activities Management and Head of the Russian Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) Center at the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) and one of the Russian editors at AGROVOC.

When did you start your experience in AGROVOC and how are you engaging with AGROVOC? 

I have been engaged in the AGROVOC activities since January 2021, after having worked for some time in its test environment. So far, I have added several dozens of Russian translations and corrected some of the existing ones.

What has been the most important achievement of being part of the editorial community? 

Now that I can see all the Russian translations visible in the pool of the Russian keywords while creating an ASFA record in the Open-ASFA software, I feel pleased that the number of the Russian terms is growing. However, in my plans there are more activities within AGROVOC: I hope that next year I will work more on the definitions and even be able to suggest some new concepts. The vocabulary work has turned out to be very engaging and rewarding! 

How does your work with AGROVOC benefit your organization? 

For VNIRO as the National ASFA Partner in Russia, it is essential to engage as many of its branches and other fishery research organizations as possible into the ASFA related activities. It especially concerns submission of the research publications on the ASFA software with their consequent uploading on the FAO site. To continue the idea from my previous answer, due to the increase of the Russian keywords number, more and more people without a good command of English could provide their input into the Open-ASFA Database. It can lead to a more enhanced ASFA contribution and dissemination of the Russian scientific output for the global research community. 

Which was the last concept/word you worked on? 

I have been working with concepts which are most frequently used by our colleagues within the VNIRO network. This is the reason why the most recent concept I have worked on is “herbivorous fishes”. The proper translation has been recently found and soon it will appear in the AGROVOC Database. 

Do you have a favorite term in AGROVOC?

I would say not "favorite" but most "teaching" one: “sponges”. It was tricky to translate, its English definition was not perfect so we had to change it a bit, it had a different hierarchy in AGROVOC and ASFA systems so this issue had to be a bit aligned too.  Working with that one, I learnt several things at a time!

The organization 

VNIRO is the head research institute of the fisheries industry in the Russian Federation. The research organization has been in function for 140 years in order to scientifically support the state activity on fishery management, coordinate implementation of plans and programs of fishery research works of all fishery scientific organizations of Russia. VNIRO carries out scientific expedition research and develops biological substantiations of volumes of the general admissible catches (ODE) and the recommended catch of aquatic biological resources of the seas and fresh waters of Russia and the World Ocean. Scientific research of VNIRO covers the issues of creation and development of scientific and technical bases of fishery activity, protection, rational use, study, conservation, reproduction of aquatic biological resources and their habitat, aquaculture, international activities.