CGIAR is a global agriculture research partnership. Its science is carried out by the 15 research centers who are members of the CGIAR Consortium in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations. Each member of the CGIAR C onsortium has the mandate to contribute to the eradication of hunger and poverty at the global level by advancing research in development . Being funded mainly through public funds there is a n obligation to e x tract ma x imum public good value from the research data the individual centers are collecting. With the e x ception of a few designated projects, i n the past , data itself was merely seen as a means to an end, synthesized to produce selected knowledge products such as publications, technical manuals or policy briefs.