Launching the DataCite Consortium in Somalia: Advancing Open Science and Research Visibility

In September 2026, SomaliREN joined the DataCite community as a Consortium Lead, taking the lead in establishing a national DataCite Consortium in Somalia. The consortium provides Somali universities and research organisations with a cost-effective, collaborative, and sustainable pathway to access DataCite infrastructure and adopt persistent identifiers (PIDs) at a national level. Through this DataCite consrtium model, participating organisations can register DataCite DOIs for more than 30 types of research outputs, resources and activities, helping increase their visibility, discoverability, accessibility, and impact while encouraging wider and more consistent adoption of DOIs across the Somali research community. The session also featured a live demonstration of SORER, SomaliREN’s national level repository, a FAIR-principles-aligned and Plan S-compliant platform with built-in DOI and ORCID support, demonstrating how this infrastructure could be used in practice by Somali institutions.