By Asha Elmi - Reporter
MOGADISHU, Somalia, September 10, 2026 The Somali Research and Education Network (SomaliREN) has joined DataCite and established Somalia’s first national DataCite Consortium, strengthening the country's research infrastructure and open science.
The new consortium will provide universities and research institutions in Somalia with a shared way to access DataCite services and register digital object identifiers (DOIs) for research outputs, SomaliREN said on Thursday.
DOIs are permanent digital identifiers assigned to research materials, making them easier to find, cite and link to other academic work.
SomaliREN said the consortium will support the registration of DOIs for more than 30 types of research outputs and resources, including theses, dissertations, datasets, academic articles, images, awards and research models.
DataCite’s global community includes more than 1,800 organisations in over 70 countries and connects more than 135 million research outputs, according to the statement.
“Establishing this national DataCite Consortium is therefore much more than providing access to DOIs,” said Ahmed Siyad, chief executive officer of SomaliREN. He said the partnership would help make research produced by Somali researchers more visible, trusted and accessible globally.
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The initiative builds on SomaliREN’s efforts to develop research infrastructure in Somalia, including digital repositories at research and education institutions.
SomaliREN has also developed the Somali Research and Education Repository (SORER), a national research repository designed to support the discovery and sharing of Somali research.
Maria Gould, DataCite’s director of strategic programmes and partnerships, welcomed SomaliREN to the DataCite community and said the consortium would help research organisations in Somalia adopt DataCite DOIs and connect their work to the global research community.
Beyond DOI registration, SomaliREN said it plans to participate in DataCite training and capacity-building programmes and promote principles including FAIR research practices, open data and persistent research identifiers.
The organisation said the partnership is intended to help Somali research institutions build stronger and more connected research infrastructure and make research produced in Somalia easier to discover, cite, reuse and access internationally.