Free Knowledge Africa (FKA) and OpenAIRE have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at improving the visibility and discoverability of African research and supporting interoperability among research infrastructures.
The collaboration brings together FKA’s knowledge of African research institutions and their information needs with OpenAIRE’s work in Open Science, research infrastructure, and scholarly information. The organizations plan to exchange knowledge and practices related to metadata standards, persistent identifiers, aggregation, curation, and the OpenAIRE Guidelines.
The partnership will support institutions seeking to improve the interoperability of repositories, journals, and other research information systems. FKA will encourage institutions within its network, where appropriate, to prepare their research sources for registration and aggregation through OpenAIRE PROVIDE, which can connect eligible sources to the OpenAIRE Graph.
Connecting these sources to broader research infrastructure could improve the discoverability of African research outputs and establish links among publications, datasets, researchers, organizations, and other research entities. The partners will also promote the use of persistent identifiers, metadata standards, and OAI-PMH interoperability to support the exchange and quality of research information across systems.
The agreement also includes capacity-building activities, including training resources, webinars, community activities, and peer-to-peer exchanges covering Open Science, Research Data Management, metadata interoperability, repository development, Open Access, and institutional Open Science policies. OpenAIRE’s OpenPlato e-learning platform will provide access to courses and reusable learning resources to support skills development and knowledge exchange.
The organizations may also explore opportunities to use the OpenAIRE Graph to assess the visibility, discoverability, and Open Access status of African research outputs as more research sources adopt interoperable practices and connect with broader research infrastructures.
The MoU provides a framework for FKA and OpenAIRE to identify further joint activities related to research visibility, Open Science capacity building, and research monitoring.
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