Nairobi, Kenya – Initiating a notable leap towards advancing the accessibility of African and global research, DataCite, Crossref, and the Africa PID Alliance (APA) have agreed to collaborate through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU, serving as a formal agreement, not only strengthens the collaboration between the organisations but also solidifies their collective dedication to fostering an open and interconnected scholarly communications ecosystem that supports Open Research.
In line with this mutual commitment, the collaboration aims to enhance persistent identifier usage, promote inclusivity in the scholarly record, and facilitate seamless integration of research outputs. This is particularly essential in the African context, where historical disparities and challenges in research visibility have long persisted within the research community. The comprehensive approach of the partnership will address infrastructural challenges, foster collaboration, and support the development of local solutions, contributing to a more equitable global scholarly ecosystem that values and incorporates the richness of African research contributions.
The areas of the collaboration will be on:
- Integration of Persistent Identifiers: Explore potential integration of services between DataCite, Crossref, and the Africa PID Alliance.
- Awareness Building: Building awareness of respective services among researchers and administrators.
- Encouraging PID Open Infrastructure Usage: Encouraging the use of persistent identifier services for researchers and organizations to support public access to research outputs and resources.
- Linking Research Outputs, Researchers, Organisations and Funding: Supporting simple links between research outputs and resources, researchers, organisations and funding.
- Explore solutions to the inclusion of patent data and indigenous knowledge in the global scholarly record, including clear provenance for all works.
About Datacite
DataCite is a global community that supports the creation and management of DOIs and metadata records for research outputs and resources across and between disciplines. Read more at datacite.org
About Crossref
Crossref is a global community infrastructure that makes all kinds of research objects easy to find, assess, and reuse through a number of services critical to research communications, including an open metadata API that sees over 1.2 billion queries every month. Crossref’s 19,000+ members come from 155 countries. Their >150 million DOI records contribute to the collective vision of a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organizations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society.
About the Africa PID Alliance (APA)
The Africa PID Alliance is part of the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa). The Africa PID Alliance’s mission is to secure the future of African Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Heritage. Through the Africa PID Alliance innovative projects, we provide reliable open research infrastructure services which provides access to knowledge and metadata about digital objects closer to the wider communities, including indigenous knowledge and patent metadata, starting from Africa. Read more at africapidalliance.org