The CIARD RING is a registry of information sources/services in agriculture. 

The RING is a CIARD project led by GFAR and is available at: www.ciardring.net

An information source is any form of making information available in a structured way: examples are search engines, databases, repositories, Open Archives, RSS feeds, XML and RDF stores... Anybody managing such services is encouraged to register them in the RING.

The services registered in the RING are described in details and categorized according to criteria that are relevant to the use of the service and its interoperability (such as standards adopted, vocabulary used, technology used, protocols implemented, level of interoperability etc.).
In addition, the RING features detailed instructions on how the registered services can be "interoperated".

The idea behind this is that it is difficult to build value-added services without knowing what has already been done, which sources are available and how to tap into them: the CIARD RING is going to provide this “missing link” between existing services that are not aware of each other and between existing services / sources and the foreseen value-added services that can be built on top of them.

The RING:

• categorizes and interlinks the featured services according to specific criteria: standards adopted, vocabulary used, technology used, protocols implemented, level of interoperability etc.;
• feature detailed instructions on how the featured services can be "interoperated". 

See the CIARD RING presentation for more information