Open Science for the discoverability of African research

Join us for a series of live webinars, where we will discuss how the persistent identifiers ORCID, ROR, and DOI enable interoperability across scholarly digital services while also ensuring the discoverability of research from and about Africa.

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are unique and enduring labels assigned to digital objects, resources, or entities, such as research datasets, academic papers, books, websites, and other item types. In scholarly records, PIDs can also be assigned to individual researchers (ORCID) and research institutions (ROR). 

This webinar series aims to facilitate African researchers, librarians, and institutions in the adoption of digital tools and persistent identifiers for a significant increase of African research discoverability, globally and to increase efficiency in scholarly workflows.

A Persistent Identifier (PID) is a long-lasting reference to a document, file, web page, or other digital object that is accessible on the internet.

In academia and for the purpose of scholarly communication, specific persistent identifiers exist for

• research files: DOI = Digital Object Identifier; https://www.doi.org/,

• individual researchers: ORCID = Open Researcher and Contributors ID; https://orcid.org/ and

• institutions: ROR = Research Organisation Registry; https://ror.org/

• funders and grants: Crossref’s Funder Registry https://www.crossref.org/documentation/funder-registry/

• research resources: RRID = Research Resource Identifiers; https://www.rrids.org/

Together with our regional partners, we are co-creating and advancing digital scholarly infrastructure for African scholarly stakeholders.

Key drivers and organisations

• LIBSENSE, https://libsense.ren.africa/en/ (Library Support for Embedded NREN Services and E-infrastructure)

  • UbuntuNet Alliance, https://ubuntunet.net/

  • ASREN, Arab States Research and Education Network (including Northern Africa and Somalia)

  • WACREN, West and Central African Research and Education Network

• Africa PID Alliance, https://africapidalliance.org/

Key documents

LIBSENSE Working Group on Infrastructure – open access journals, repositories for publications and data and open discovery services. (2023). Roadmap for Implementing PIDs in Africa. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7970386

Nabil Ksibi, Joy Owango, & Sara El-Gebali. (2023). Africa PID Alliance Digital Object Identifiers Registration Concept Note. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7924069

Havemann, Jo, Bezuidenhout, Louise, Achampong, Joyce, Akligoh, Harry, Ayodele, Obasegun, Hussein, Shaukatali, …. (2020). Harnessing the Open Science infrastructure for an efficient African response to COVID-19 [preprint]. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3733768