2026-10-27 –, Naturalis 01
Do you struggle to implement persistent identifiers (PIDs) in regions with limited infrastructure or financial constraints? While 11 million researchers have ORCID iDs, institutional integration and collaboration with trust markers remain uneven, particularly in the Global South. In this session, you will discover how ORCID works to overcome systemic barriers and implement successful, community-led solutions that promote Open Science and FAIR principles.
You will explore real-world strategies for navigating technical gaps, fee structures, and linguistic hurdles that often exclude communities in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
By the end of this session, you will:
- Have resources to enhance a "community of practice" in your country or region.
- Discover how to utilise the Membership Equity Program (MEP) and strategic grants to jumpstart integrations and community building in low and lower-middle-income countries.
- Identify how you can help adapt global models to be inclusive and equitable for underrepresented regions.
While persistent identifiers (PIDs) are foundational to a robust global research infrastructure, their effective adoption by governments and research-performing institutions remains uneven, particularly in the Global South.
PIDs(such as ORCID iDs for researchers and DOIs for research outputs) ensure that outputs and data about the research career are discoverable, properly attributed, and interoperable across global systems, and, when adopted strategically, can lead to better global ranking performance. However, a significant "adoption gap" exists between the Global North and the Global South. While there are over 11 million individual researchers with an active ORCID iD from every country in the world, institutional memberships and integrations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa are still lagging.
This session explores the challenges faced by communities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Asia and Africa and how to close the gap. From initiatives like the ORCID Global Participation Program and the Regional Consortium model, we will discuss systemic barriers, such as financial and human constraints and infrastructure gaps and showcase successful, community-led solutions that promote Open Science and FAIR principles.
Based on recent landscape assessments, the primary obstacles to PID adoption include:
- Infrastructure & Technical Gaps: A lack of existing organisational infrastructure and human capacity to support and sustain national PID consortia.
- Financial Models: Current fee structures are often unrealistic for the economic realities of many African, Latin American, and Caribbean institutions.
- Political & Linguistic Hurdles: Fluctuating political support for Open Science and the dominance of English in global infrastructure create additional layers of exclusion.
- Awareness & Capacity: A general lack of awareness regarding the tangible benefits of PIDs for local researchers and institutions.
Proposed Solutions & Success Stories
The proposal highlights active strategies currently being used to mitigate these barriers: - Community-Led Integrations: Partnering with established regional leaders—such as LA Referencia, SciELO, Redalyc, PKP and NRENs Alliances—to embed PIDs into existing local workflows.
- The Regional Consortium Model: Implementing regional initiatives (such as the LAC Regional Consortium led by Consortia SAS, and the Arab Regional consortium led by ASREN) allows smaller organisations to pool resources and build a "community of practice" without the burden of sustaining a standalone national consortium.
- Equity Programs: Utilising programs like the ORCID Membership Equity Program (MEP), to facilitate that organisations in low and lower-middle-income countries participate.
- Targeted Funding: Awarding strategic grants to support adoption in specific countries to jumpstart technical integrations and community building.
Learning Objectives: - Share the specific socio-economic and technical barriers to ORCID integrations in LAC, Asia and Africa.
- Learn how the "Regional Consortium" model can scale adoption in underrepresented regions.
- Identify how global infrastructure providers can adapt their models to be more inclusive and equitable.
- Increase awareness of the impact of a strategic adoption of PIDs as part of data management best practices.
Ana is responsible for developing and promoting community adoption of ORCID across different regions in the world. She also focuses on growing and improving ORCID integration development and knowledge. She is always seeking for global collaboration, with emphasis on the Latin America and the Caribbean region. She has collaborated with several institutions from different sectors during their development, implementation and adoption of ORCID and has participated in several international conferences and training throughout her career. Ana is an enthusiastic and active promoter of Open Science and Persistent Identifiers (PIDs). She has an MBA from the Antonio de Nebrija University in Spain and is passionate about teaching and data analysis.
Lombe Tembo is ORCID’s Senior Grant Program Officer and Engagement Lead, based in Zambia. She leads ORCID’s Global Participation Fund, supporting initiatives that advance the adoption and integration of persistent identifiers across research ecosystems, particularly in Africa and other underrepresented regions.
With a strong focus on community engagement, Lombe works closely with universities, research networks, and regional organisations to strengthen research visibility, interoperability, and open science practices. She has been instrumental in fostering collaborations that support the development of national and regional ORCID consortia, helping institutions embed ORCID into their research workflows and infrastructure.
Lombe brings extensive experience in stakeholder engagement, programme management, and capacity building. She is particularly passionate about enabling equitable participation in global research systems and supporting emerging research communities to increase the visibility and impact of their work.