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With research staff from more than 70 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Timothy Thomas

Timothy Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 480 employees working in over 70 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Communications and Public Affairs (CPA)

Leigh Plummer

Senior Library and Information Specialist

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Bio

Leigh Plummer is a Senior Library and Information Specialist in the Communications and Public Affairs Unit based in Washington, DC. She manages the CGSpace-IFPRI Repository and the research outreach efforts. She tracks usage of IFPRI’s research and reports this information internally. She received a Bachelors of Art degree from DePauw University and a Masters of Library and Information Science degree from University of Maryland, College Park.

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Publications

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Journal Article

Preservation of the IFPRI record: A case study of institutional repository mergers and migrations

2026Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; Prasai, Nilam; Yerramareddy, Indira
Details

Preservation of the IFPRI record: A case study of institutional repository mergers and migrations

At its core, a repository migration is the transfer of records from one system to another. In some cases, it is more of an unraveling, repair, relocation, and rebuilding of a historic property. In 2024, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) library undertook its second migration from an independent CONTENTdm repository to a shared DSpace repository. The institute set an ambitious goal to complete the migration within a single contract cycle with CONTENTdm. Since 2012, the repository has functioned as a bibliographic metadata layer serving the main corporate website, numerous project sites, and the global consortium (CGIAR) website, as well as a digital publishing platform and institutional metrics and reporting system. The team started working with a combination of tools, including: Microsoft Excel, OpenRefine, and custom scripts. Microsoft Excel allowed staff to easily see and manipulate large amounts of data across different metadata fields. OpenRefine (version 3.7) was instrumental in normalizing and cleaning name and keyword variations, as well as locating and editing a single repeated datapoint. The scripts, created by a member of the team and author of this paper, saved hours of time and allowed the team to meet ambitious goals. The team successfully migrated over 20,000 records within 13 months while simultaneously improving metadata quality. Prior to the migration, about half of journal articles lacked external links and several dozen PDFs had been lost over time. Additionally, from 2008–2017, IFPRI’s records experienced an average of 40% link rot. All of these issues were resolved during this process. Furthermore, the IFPRI record is now interoperable with the other CGIAR institutions and external search engines. While repository and metadata management remain ongoing tasks, this migration represents a significant step forward in preserving institutional knowledge, adopting established standards and best practices in knowledge management, supporting consortium activities, and enhancing the visibility of agricultural research outputs.

Year published

2026

Authors

Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; Prasai, Nilam; Yerramareddy, Indira

Citation

Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; Prasai, Nilam; and Yerramareddy, Indira. 2026. Preservation of the IFPRI record: A case study of institutional repository mergers and migrations. International Journal on Digital Libraries 27(3): 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-026-00446-y

Keywords

Digital Libraries; Libraries; Data Repositories; Research Data Management; Knowledge-based Systems; Knowledge and Information Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-026-00446-y Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Poster

Preservation of the IFPRI record: Moving 50 Years of research

2025Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; Yerramareddy, Indira
Details

Preservation of the IFPRI record: Moving 50 Years of research

As the International Food Policy Research Institute approaches a half-century of agricultural research, the Communications Unit has taken the opportunity to review the legacy of both our organization and our researchers. As part of this effort, the Knowledge Management team spent a year migrating over 25,000 metadata records, including about 13,000 with a PDF file attached, from an Institutional Repository (CONTENTdm) to a shared Consortial Repository (CGSpace based on DSpace). In the process, we have improved the metadata and worked to conform our records with the different standards of the shared environment and ensure continued discoverability and usability. We were also able to identify key gaps in our open access holdings and added PDF files were possible. We continue to validate the metadata and holdings, including additions of chapter records that were previously missing. Our project has led to a greater role for our team on the shared platform and we have trained other CGIAR centers on how to successfully migrate their collections.

Year published

2025

Authors

Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; Yerramareddy, Indira

Citation

Plummer, Leigh; Miller, Ryan; and Yerramareddy, Indira. 2025. Preservation of the IFPRI record: Moving 50 Years of research. Poster presented at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 29, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175252

Keywords

Digital Libraries; Library Sciences; Information Science; Institutional Development; Knowledge and Information Systems; Knowledge Management

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Poster

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Poster

Opening data with trust: Reflections on a holistic approach to data governance at IFPRI

2020Yerramareddy, Indira; Prasai, Nilam; Saito, Erica; Plummer, Leigh; Bayeh, Mulugeta; Shang, Xinyuan; Miller, Ryan; Jung, Yunchul
Details

Opening data with trust: Reflections on a holistic approach to data governance at IFPRI

IFPRI’s experience building overall data governance for Research Data Management (RDM) has helped us to build trust among IFPRI staff for opening their data. We will highlight how policies, protocols and processes are equally important components for opening data in addition to infrastructure and digital repositories. The mandate of IFPRI is to provide research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. In pursuit of that mandate, IFPRI generates data ranging from household surveys to process-produced data and makes those data available and easily accessible. IFPRI has moved progressively toward full FAIR compliance beginning with publicly available datasets hosted on the website in 1999, a published data policy in 2000, establishing a data repository through Dataverse in 2007, and a Data Governance Team (DGT) in 2017. Revisions to the data policy in 2005 required researchers to publish the datasets generated during research projects within two years of data collection/finalization. However, the intention of the institute did not lead to automatic compliance by research staff. The data policy was not observed consistently, and publishing datasets remained voluntary. Researchers repeatedly expressed hesitations for opening data widely. To overcome resistance from research staff, respond to open data movements, regulations, and policies from donors and governments, and identify gaps in RDM within the institute, IFPRI established a term-limited DGT in 2017. The first undertaking of this team was launching a review of the data management practices by an external consultant. Based on the recommendations from the review, IFPRI established a permanent data governance body, Data Governance and Management Committee (DGMC). DGMC facilitates the implementation of other recommendations from the review and address staff concerns. IFPRI has established new policies, processes, incentives and systems for RDM. As a result, IFPRI has 420 well-documented open datasets, and researchers are more confident and trust the system.

Year published

2020

Authors

Yerramareddy, Indira; Prasai, Nilam; Saito, Erica; Plummer, Leigh; Bayeh, Mulugeta; Shang, Xinyuan; Miller, Ryan; Jung, Yunchul

Citation

Yerramareddy, Indira; Prasai, Nilam; Saito, Erica; Plummer, Leigh; Bayeh, Mulugeta; et al. 2020. Opening data with trust: Reflections on a holistic approach to data governance at IFPRI. Poster Presented December 16, 2020 at the AGU Fall Meeting.

Keywords

Open Data; Governance; Research Data Management; Data Repositories

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Poster