Advancing Research Through DataCite's Global Access Fund: Université Virtuelle de Côte d'Ivoire

In Côte d’Ivoire, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research began implementing open science before the signing of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Indeed, faced with the difficulties of access to scientific production, the Ministry created and launched the project of the Virtual Library of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Côte d’Ivoire (UVCI) in August 2016, a national open access warehouse which aims to improve the accessibility, visibility, and reuse of data and research results from all nine public academic and research institutions and four out of thirty-five Grandes Ecoles Publiques. 

The UVCI database helped to revitalize the Consortium of Higher Education Libraries of Côte d’Ivoire (COBES-CI) in February 2017 during a workshop organized by the Trans-African Development NetWork (TANDEM) in collaboration with the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN). In 2018, UCVI launched Open Access Week Côte d’Ivoire (OAW-CI), to promote open access and open science in Côte d’Ivoire through the organization of conferences, capacity building workshops, policy development, and international collaboration. Encouraged by the signing of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science in 2021, the UVCI initiated persistent identifier (PID) projects, notably ORCID and DataCite, and received support from DataCite's Global Access Fund (GAF) in 2024 to embark on an awareness campaign for the integration of the DataCite API.

Collaboration Between the Virtual University, COBES-CI, and DataCite Staff/Ambassadors

DataCite’s Global Access Fund (GAF) provides technical assistance and expert/ambassador support to UVCI, the project leader, and other COBES-CI members. The GAF project aims to raise awareness through a campaign to encourage the integration of the DataCite API. The project also involves members of the Consortium of Higher Education Libraries of Côte d’Ivoire from more than 10 academic and research institutions. So far, more than 6,300 DOIs have been assigned to documents available in the national repository. The success of all activities is the result of collaboration at the national and international levels. The national repository now contains more than 10,000 documents, the majority of which are theses and dissertations, either natively electronic or digitized with the support of partners, including the MTN Foundation in Côte d’Ivoire. This number will increase in December with the latest collection carried out in four COBES-CI member institutions (UFHB, UNA, UAO and INPHB) in July 2025.

Project Implementation

Our partnership with DataCite has been instrumental for the project's success. DataCite offers tools, resources, collaboration and networking that simplify the implementation of the project.

The project’s main goal is to create and implement a national consortium in Côte d'Ivoire. To achieve this goal, the project is focused on raising awareness and advocating for integrating the API DataCite, implemented through the following four pillars:

• Capacity building
• Creation of a PID platform
• Advocacy for the integration of the DataCite API
• Creation and implementation of the PID Consortium

Capacity Building

The capacity building pillar enabled the training of the project team, librarians, and developers during two webinars and a hybrid workshop with DataCite team members and the support of Bessem Aamira, developer and manager of the national repository in Tunisia, and also DataCite Ambassador. Training strengthened skills development for a good understanding of PIDs and infrastructure issues, the DataCite Metadata Schema, and automation of the DOI assignment system.

Creation of PID platform

A PID platform, integrated in the open science national portal, created in November 2024, is a key element for sharing information and knowledge, best practices, and networking with the consortium members and other communities in the world. We are still improving this platform.

Advocacy for Integrating API DataCite in the National Repository to Enhance Research Outputs Visibility

The national repository is a pooling database for sharing knowledge with all the public academic and research institutions in Côte d'Ivoire. These institutions are well represented in the Libraries Consortium for Higher Education. Advocacy activities are focused on webinars and the dissemination of information to research decision makers and communities of practice in 2024. Advocating and sensitizing on DOI assignment to enhance visibility of research outputs facilitated the national workshop organization on creating and implementing the Consortium with institutions' commitment in Côte d'Ivoire. 

DataCite support was impactful for the assignment of more than 6,300 DOIs (from February to March 2025) in collaboration with Tunisia DataCite Ambassador, Bessem Aamira. Most of the research decision makers are aware of the adoption and implementation of DOI across the national repository, and they should utilize DataCite's open infrastructure, which is crucial for improving research visibility. 

Creating and implementing the Persistent Identifiers (ORCID-DOI) Consortium in Côte d'Ivoire

In November 2024, more than 11 institutions participated in the hybrid national workshop on creating and implementing DataCite DOIs, in partnership with DataCite. Delegates were well informed by DataCite Community Specialist, Mohamad Mostafa, on what a member consortium is, how to organise it, how to apply, the roles of institutions, fees, etc. The need for a consortium was also shown clearly by Bessem Aamira with the Tunisia CNDTS Consortium as a case study. We noticed in this case study that the primary goal of the Tunisian DOI Consortium is to create a sustainable national community that enhances the adoption and implementation of DOIs across the country and thus, should effectively utilize DataCite's open infrastructure. This infrastructure is crucial for improving the visibility of Tunisian research outputs. 

For the follow-up of this workshop, the delegates made a designation of UVCI as the lead and suggested another workshop to refine the implementation and the role of each member in the consortium. They should make a report in their institution and come back to the next and final workshop with agreements. 

Next steps of the project and final report

As we prepare to bring the project to a close, the following activities are due to end in December 2025: 

• Continuing the assignment of DOIs
• Organizing the final workshop for implementing the consortium
• Writing the final report.

To conclude, we thank DataCite and salute the partnership, which was welcome to contribute with impact to the visibility and accessibility to research outputs. DataCite's financial and technical support was instrumental to the success of all the activities of the project. This project strengthened UVCI's collaboration with COBES-CI members, academic and research institutions decision makers. At the international level, it strengthened capacity building, networking with DataCite Ambassadors, and sharing the Tunisia case study as best practice.

Establishing the DataCite Consortium in Côte d'Ivoire is a crucial step toward strengthening the country's open research infrastructure and enabling Open Science. This initiative will provide universities and research organizations across the country with the opportunity to connect their existing repositories and systems to DataCite Fabrica, offering a sustainable and cost-effective solution for registering DOIs. Through the consortium, institutions will be able to register over 30 types of research outputs and resources, including datasets, dissertations, reports, and samples.

We are working closely with the DataCite team to establish the framework for the consortium, with the goal of officially launching it in 2026. This will not only enhance the visibility and impact of research from Côte d'Ivoire but also integrate the country more fully into the global open science community.