DataCite Insights: Strengthening Open Science and Research Visibility in Africa

In this session, we explore how persistent identifiers and open research infrastructure are transforming research visibility and discoverability across Africa.Mohamad Mostafa (DataCite) opens with an overview of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, particularly its second pillar on open research infrastructure and explains how tools like DOIs, ORCID IDs, and ROR IDs work together to make research outputs findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). He walks through DataCite's global community of over 1,700 member organizations across 69 countries, its Fabrica platform for DOI registration, and the consortium model that makes adoption cost-effective for institutions across Eastern and Southern Africa through the UbuntuNet Alliance.Ahmed Siyad (CEO, SomaliREN) then shares the story behind SORER — the Somali Research and Education Repository — a centralized, multi-institutional platform built to address low research visibility, plagiarism concerns, and limited access to global scholarly infrastructure. He covers how SomaliREN integrated DOI minting through the DataCite/UbuntuNet consortium, adopted ORCID IDs, established the Somali Identity Federation (SIF), and achieved FAIR compliance — making Somali research outputs accessible and interoperable on a global scale.The session also touches on the importance of hosting research infrastructure on the African continent itself, in line with the CARE Principles and the mission of AfricArXiv.This webinar is part of the AfricArXiv Open Science Webinar Series, supported by Invest in Open Infrastructure and co-organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and Access to Perspectives.Learn more and access past webinars at www.africarxiv.orgFollow for future sessions on open access, persistent identifiers, open science policy, and more.#openscience #PersistentIdentifiers #openaccess #data #research