Advancing Research Through DataCite's Global Access Fund: Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN)

In today's digital scholarly landscape, ensuring research is findable, accessible, and trusted is crucial for national development and global collaboration. For Malawi, a key step toward this goal is now underway. The Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) is spearheading an initiative to transform how Malawian research is shared and discovered worldwide.

MAREN is officially recognized by the Government of Malawi through the Ministry of Education. Established in 2005, MAREN plays a central role in strengthening connectivity, collaboration, and access to global research platforms for universities and research institutions in Malawi.

With strategic support from DataCite's Global Access Fund, MAREN implemented a pilot project that established a unified national research repository integrated with DataCite infrastructure, promoting open-access practices and enhancing the credibility, visibility, and citability of Malawian research through the assignment of persistent Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). This initiative positions Malawi's scholarly output more prominently within global knowledge systems.

Although universities in Malawi are increasingly embracing digital transformation to make their research outputs more findable and accessible, progress has been constrained by limited infrastructure, inconsistent policy implementation, financial limitations, and, in some cases, reluctance among researchers to adopt open access. In addition, the absence of a national-level repository capable of aggregating and showcasing locally produced research outputs has further constrained visibility and discoverability.

Connecting Research in Malawian Research Repositories

At the beginning of 2025, MAREN launched the project with a kick-off meeting that confirmed the project scope and implementation approach, assigned roles and responsibilities, and adjusted timelines where necessary. Procurement of essential infrastructure equipment began shortly thereafter, alongside virtual simulations to prepare for repository integration.

Stakeholder engagement and needs assessment activities were conducted between February and March 2025 to support implementation. An in-person stakeholder meeting in Liwonde brought together representatives from MAREN, University of Malawi (UNIMA), Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS), and Mzuzu University (MZUNI). The engagement focused on aligning institutional expectations, introducing DataCite, and informing the phased approach to repository integration and capacity building.

Following these preparatory activities, tangible progress was recorded. The national repository platform—built on DSpace, the system already in use across participating institutions—was deployed and is now being actively connected to institutional systems. Integration with the UNIMA repository has been completed, enabling aggregation of research outputs at the national level. Technical upgrades are underway at MZUNI, with MUBAS scheduled to follow. Once completed, these integrations will establish a connected network of Malawian research repositories.

Integration with DataCite has been central to achieving the project's objectives. By enabling DOI registration for research outputs, the project is improving metadata quality, strengthening trust in Malawian research, and ensuring long-term persistence and citability. The repository is designed to register a range of scholarly outputs, including theses, dissertations, journal articles, and institutional research publications.

Implementation faced several challenges, including limited technical capacity among institutional staff, gaps in expertise in repository management and metadata standards, infrastructure limitations, technical complexities in integrating DSpace with DataCite, procurement delays, and reliance on institutional IT teams for system upgrades and metadata cleanup. Despite these constraints, phased implementation and sustained collaboration with stakeholders have enabled steady progress.

Committed to Scaling DOI Adoption through the DataCite Consortium

This implementation has highlighted both the potential and the ongoing needs within Malawi's research infrastructure. For institutions beyond the pilot, challenges in digital readiness, capacity, and funding persist. However, the progress achieved clearly demonstrates the power of a coordinated national approach, paired with global partnership, to advance digital preservation and research visibility.

Looking ahead, MAREN sees strong opportunities to scale this work. In collaboration with the Malawi Library and Information Consortium (MALICO), and operating under the DataCite consortium model as a Consortium Lead, MAREN has the capacity to provide DOI services to research organizations and institutions across the country. This enables them to register DataCite DOIs for over 30 types of research outputs, resources, and activities. This expansion will diversify the range of research outputs collected and further solidify Malawi's presence in global scholarly communication.

By scaling DOI adoption and broadening repository integration, MAREN is fostering a sustainable national culture of Open Science. Central to this effort is the use of rich, high-quality, and openly available metadata, which enhances interoperability, machine actionability, and long-term discoverability of research outputs. Through DataCite DOIs and open metadata, research from Malawi can be more easily connected, cited, tracked, and reused within the global scholarly ecosystem.

In parallel, MAREN is placing emphasis on capacity-building activities and community awareness, supporting universities and research institutes in understanding the value of persistent identifiers (PIDs) such as DOIs across the full research lifecycle. These efforts help institutions strengthen research management practices, improve impact tracking, and adopt international best practices aligned with Open Science principles.

Together, these initiatives contribute to strengthening Malawi's open research infrastructure, enabling equitable participation in global knowledge exchange, ensuring the long-term preservation of scholarly and cultural outputs, and increasing the visibility and impact of Malawi's research contributions worldwide.