Africa PID Alliance Digital Object Identifiers Registration Concept Note

Persistent Identifiers are the pillars of an interoperable, persistent and reliable Open Research Infrastructure. This is the reason why a lot of countries/regions and organizations took the initiative to contribute to this network and help promote the use of PIDs through their academic and publishing ecosystems. The objective of this document is to structure the feasibility, implementation and manageability of the project. A survey on the African continental level will shed light on or provide insights on the need of a DOI Registration Agency tailored to the continental context. One of the innovations that this agency will bring is a specific prefix for Africa that will provide; Ownership to African researcher over their content, Promotion of African content and output in terms of research data, works, publications, patents, etc.. Preservation of African indigenous knowledge and works and cultural heritage under a dedicated prefix. This work is an effort towards embracing diversity, equity and inclusion, based on the different needs of the different communities as we know that different communities have different needs. The result of the survey will show the core issues keeping innovators, researchers, authors and indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage managers from registering their content and outputs online. Believing that an African participation to global collection of knowledge is important, TCC Africa and Helix Analytics Africa, that are part of University of Nairobi (Kenya) will help realize the project upon the results of the survey and studies.