Mekelle University (MU), founded in 2000 and located in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, is a research-intensive institution dedicated to advancing knowledge, economic growth, and social welfare both nationally and internationally. As a founding member of the Ethiopian Research Universities Forum in 2025, MU is committed to elevating the visibility and impact of Ethiopian research on the global stage. A significant part of this mission involves ensuring our research is visible, accessible, and impactful. However, a critical gap was identified: a vast repository of valuable scholarly outputs, including postgraduate theses, dissertations, and datasets, remained largely invisible to the global research community because they lacked persistent identifiers (PIDs) like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). This made them difficult to cite, track, and reuse, limiting their potential impact.
To address this gap, MU applied to the DataCite Global Access Fund (GAF) and was awarded a grant that provided critical support to integrate DataCite DOIs into our institutional repository, removing financial barriers that had previously prevented our participation in global research infrastructure. Our project’s core objective is to enhance the visibility, accessibility, and citability of Ethiopian research outputs—ensuring that early-career scholars and local knowledge are represented in the global scientific record. By leveraging DataCite DOIs, MU is not only advancing open science within our institution but also paving the way for a broader Ethiopian research community to join global scholarly networks. This work represents a foundational step toward equitable participation in international science.
From Integration to Policies to Building a Consortium
Through the GAF-funded project, we have made significant strides in technically integrating our institutional repository (DSpace) and our Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform with DataCite Fabrica. We have successfully configured automatic DOI registration for both DSpace 8.0, DSpace 9.0, and OJS 3.4, ensuring a seamless workflow for our researchers. To date, we have registered over 1,181 DOIs, making a diverse range of outputs permanently citable. This includes 498 (Mekelle University Repository) theses and dissertations, 258 datasets from the Tigray Region Data Management Center, which is indexed in re3data, and 425 journal outputs, mainly articles from Mekelle University Online Journals, Injibara University, Raya University, and Hawassa University.
On April 2, 2025, at a hybrid meeting, Mohamad Mostafa (DataCite Community Specialist), in his presentation, provided an overview of open science principles, the role of open research infrastructure, and the importance of adopting Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) and open metadata in research workflows. The project leader also presented the project goals and expected impacts. This hybrid event clarified the need for the Ethiopian DataCite Consortium to offer a sustainable and cost-effective solution for research institutions to register their research outputs and resources with DOIs and embrace open research practices. Generally, over 250 journal chief editors, librarians, researchers, and administrators from most potential member institutions nationwide participated in our project events. These sessions covered the importance of DOIs, Open Researcher and Contributor iD (ORCID) integration, and open science principles. This outreach has sparked significant interest, leading to the onboarding of several institutions and paving the way for a national consortium in Ethiopia.
Community awareness workshops/activities hosted at Mekelle University, Ethiopia.
To ensure accurate metadata mapping to the DataCite Metadata Schema (Kernel 4.6), we customized a DataCite metadata generator tool based on the newer Kernel 4.6. This enabled precise manual DOI assignment in both XML and JSON formats, significantly improving metadata quality and completeness. This ongoing work also serves as a valuable learning tool for our local context.
Mekelle University’s Institutional Open Access Policy and Institutional Repository Policy approval was delayed. Both draft version policies were uploaded to the Mekelle University repository and are awaiting final senate approval. The delay in approving the open access policy led to applying proactive measures through the national open access policy and working around this by implementing embargo-compliant DOI assignment (metadata-only visibility until full-text release).
We are addressing ORCID integration hurdles with DSpace 8.0 through collaborative troubleshooting and plan a future upgrade to DSpace 9.x for robust functionality. This experience underscores a key project insight: the powerful synergy of PIDs like DOIs, ORCID iDs, and ROR IDs is essential for strengthening Ethiopia’s research ecosystem.
Beyond technical integration, our outreach efforts have yielded substantial national impact. We have successfully onboarded seven institutions at the national level, exceeding our initial target of five, with Mekelle University serving as the consortium lead. This success has generated interest from many other organizations, with ongoing communications to expand the network further. As part of our sustainability strategy, we’ve initiated steps to facilitate membership payments beyond 2025. These collective efforts are laying the groundwork for a resilient, inclusive, and nationally coordinated open science ecosystem in Ethiopia. The impact of using DataCite DOIs is already evident. Our research outputs are now discoverable through global indexes that harvest DataCite metadata, directly increasing their visibility and potential for citation.
Towards Equity in Global Research
This GAF project has unlocked a pivotal opportunity for Mekelle University and Ethiopia: the chance to participate equitably in global research. By integrating DataCite’s infrastructure into our systems, we have laid a sustainable foundation for open research practices that will benefit our scholars for years to come. The project has demonstrated the transformative power of PIDs in amplifying the impact of research from underrepresented regions.
Looking forward, our relationship with DataCite is set to deepen. We are actively working to expand DataCite membership in a national Ethiopian DataCite Consortium, with a steering committee already nominated and terms of reference prepared. We plan to continue this partnership by joining the DataCite Consortia Partnership Program and through the ongoing efforts of our team in the volunteer DataCite Ambassador Program. Our vision is to champion open science principles across Ethiopia, ensuring our national research ecosystem is connected, visible, and influential. The journey continues, and the best is yet to come.
Join the Ethiopian DataCite Consortium
Ethiopian academic and research institutions, museums and archive centers, learned societies, and research organizations in general are invited to join the Ethiopian DataCite Consortium—a growing community dedicated to advancing open research and improving research visibility. By joining the consortium, members can register DOIs for more than 30 types of research outputs, resources, and activities, including dissertations, journal articles, reports, datasets, awards, and more—helping to boost the visibility of Ethiopian research and enhance its global accessibility. Express your interest in being part of the consortium and join the Ethiopian DataCite Consortium Mailing List to receive updates from both the Ethiopian DataCite Consortium and the global DataCite community.
Yemane Seged
Tekleweyni Geday
Guesh Amiha
Dr. Eyasu Yazew
