The Africa PID Alliance is delighted to announce its partnership with the ARK Alliance, a global community initiative guiding the future of ARK infrastructure and the ARK specification. The partnership brings together AfricaPID Alliance’s regional expertise with ARK Alliance’s established persistent identifier (PID) infrastructure towards strengthening PID infrastructure in Africa, supporting open research and digital preservation across the continent.
Since its establishment in 2018, the ARK Alliance (ARKA) has emerged as a global leader in digital preservation, with more than 1,500 organizations registered to use ARKs worldwide, including national libraries, data centers, archives, fine art and natural history museums, publishers, government agencies, and vendors. To date, these institutions have created over 8.2 billion ARK identifiers, demonstrating the system’s crucial role in maintaining digital information accessibility. As a member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), ARKA continues to champion innovative approaches to digital preservation.
Initial efforts will focus on strengthening technical capacity through knowledge exchange and implementation of best practices in PID production and management. The partnership is exploring several opportunities, including the potential establishment of a regional ARK servive provider in East Africa (cf. WACREN in West Africa) and integration with existing systems such as the Local Contexts Hub. These initiatives aim to create seamless connections between research organizations, contributors, funding sources, data, software, and publications, making African research more accessible and discoverable worldwide.
“Persistent identifiers are the foundation of modern digital research infrastructure. Through this collaboration, we’re building capacity that will empower African institutions to better preserve and showcase their research contributions.”, remarked Joy Owango, the Africa PID Alliance Project Lead.
“The ARK Alliance is thrilled to partner with the Africa PID Alliance. We look forward to integrating new use cases while bringing the flexibility and low cost that ARKs offer to this work that is so vital in preserving global scientific and cultural heritage.”, commented John Kunze, creator of the ARK identifier scheme and infrastructure.
About The ARK Alliance
The ARK Alliance emerged from a collaboration between the California Digital Library and DuraSpace/LYRASIS. Launched in 2018, it has gained the support of 47 institutions. Since 2021 the ARK Alliance has been a member of the NDSA, an international consortium committed to the long-term preservation of digital information.
For more information visit: https://arks.org/
About Africa PID Alliance
The Africa PID Alliance is dedicated to securing the future of African innovation, indigenous knowledge, and cultural heritage. Through the provision of reliable open research infrastructure services, the alliance enables access to knowledge and metadata about digital objects, with a strong emphasis on Africa’s unique contributions to global research.The Africa PID Alliance is the Open Infrastructure program of the Training Centre in Communication
For more information on APA visit: https://africapidalliance.org/