In 2015, IRD’s action aimed at the general public put the priority on climate change with exhibitions, conferences and debates, workshops, film shows and participatory actions specifically aimed at young people in France and the overseas collectivities and regions, and in our partner countries in the Global South.
In all, almost 1,000 young people and around 50 teachers benefited from the various initiatives run in 2015, most notably Cities in Question and Climate under Surveillance.
From the conferences and debates organised to participation in various events (festivals, science fairs, environment days and so on), IRD researchers were involved in a total of 371 public events in France (28%) and the overseas collectivities and regions (19%), and in partner countries in Africa (29%) and Latin America (20%). Most of these actions concerned environmental issues in Southern countries.
The events were an also an opportunity to present four new exhibitions which were devoted to rivers in the context of climate change, urban development and the Lengguru exhibition. In all, IRD’s exhibitions, of which there are thirty or so in the catalogue, have been presented on 130 occasions in France, the overseas collectivities and regions, and more than twenty other countries.
Editorial output focused on the main research for development issues, with around thirty works published or co-published on environmental questions such as climate change and biodiversity protection in Southern countries. The new Editions IRD online bookstore opened in late 2014 and now offers some a number of new titles. There are more than 300 publications on sale in all, a third of which are available in digital format.
To coincide with COP21 in Paris in December 2015 and looking ahead to COP22 next November in Marrakech, IRD has developed a transmedia project known as Climate under Surveillance. This comprises a participatory multimedia web platform (in French) – www.climat-sous-surveillance.ird.fr – with a series of humorous cartoons (Paroles d’appareils — The instruments speak), a game involving around fifteen secondary school and further education students (200 young people in all) across the world over 2015/2016, a series of mediation actions and a social media campaign, and is designed to demonstrate the scientific instrumentation used to observe and study climate change. The web platform contains educational files, explanatory videos and a selection of multimedia resources (films, conferences via podcasts, exhibitions, etc.), a calendar of events, portraits and video interviews of researchers, plus a Q&A area where participants can ask scientists questions to learn more about the climate. Thirty experts from IRD or partner organisations answered questions in the run-up to COP21.
Several tools have been developed to provide open access to resources. IRD collects all publications by its researchers and makes them available via the Horizon database and the HAL open archive. The Horizon database is very widely consulted with 10,000 pdf documents downloaded every day, most notably in countries in the Global South. In 2015, it ranks fourth among French open archives in the Ranking Web of Repositories1 , just behind HAL to which IRD also contributes; worldwide, it is ranked 142nd overall and 38th for wealth of content (out of a total 2,200 open archives rated).
In 2015, IRD played an active role in Open Access Week, a national initiative with the theme ‘Researchers, set your publications free!’. By the end of the operation, more than 300 publications had been made available via open access on Horizon or HAL.
As part of the PeTroLAC project (tropical pedology open access) backed by the French ministry for national education, higher education and research with a grant of €50,000, 2,000 documents and 2,000 maps from IRD have been scanned. This digital collection (the full versions of a total 4,500 documents, 2,500 of which were already available) is the largest French and international collection on tropical pedology offering the full versions of texts via open access over the internet.
More than 18,000 consultations have been recorded via the Scopp.it! account Open access pour la recherche pour le développement2.
Finally, work began on NumeriSud, a platform set up to share scientific resources and training tools. This digital campus is set to be inaugurated in 2016