Meant to fulfill one of ORCID’s four priorities outlined in From Vision to Value: ORCID’s 2022–2025 Strategic Plan, the Global Participation Fund (GPF), one of the initiatives of our Global Participation Program (GPP), has awarded 15 institutions with funding to improve understanding and encourage uptake of ORCID in under-represented countries in the Global South. Since 2022, this program has helped ORCID increase global participation by remedying gaps in organizational participation with 12-month grants up to US$20,000.
Our recent GPF webinar, Spearheading Change across the Globe: A Showcase of ORCID Global Participation Fund Awardees, took viewers on a journey of discovery to learn from our past GPF awardees of the GPF’s Community Development and Outreach and Technical Integration grants. The webinar featured participants from University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Eko Konnect, Lyrasis, AfricArXiv, and Public Knowledge Project.
Before the next application period opens on 3 April, we invite you to learn from the experiences and perspectives of awardees about the application process, planning processes, updates on their initiatives, and more.
Past awardees share insights about GPF process
Lasith Gunawardena with University of Sri Jayewardenepura originally learned about the GPF from LinkedIn.
“I realized that in a country like Sri Lanka, which is a developing country, there is very little awareness of ORCID,” he said. “Once the GPF was launched, I got the updates on email and on Linkedin, and I thought it was a good opportunity for me to consider planning some way where the Sri Lankan community can benefit from the potential.”
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Owen Iyoha with Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative said that when they heard about the GPF and saw the forms that were needed for the application, they were glad at how easy they were to fill out.
“The actual forms themselves were very straightforward in terms of being able to put the proposal together,” he said. “There were very concise specific questions that needed to be answered, so that made our job a whole lot easier.”
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After Lyrasis received notice of their funding award, Sheila Rabun said the first thing they did was to map out a timeline and start connecting with partners.
“We created a projected timeline for the next year of the different activities and things that would need to take place to make sure that we can complete the project within the given timeframe,” she said. “I also reached out to other consortia leads, letting them know that if they have organizations in their country that are using DSpace that we are going to be working on this project. And so through that I kind of put together an informal advisory board with other consortia leads so that they can be involved.”
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Awardees also shared some important milestones of their initiatives. Ebuka Ezeike with AfricArXiv shared that one of the major projects was a project called the Open Science Webinar series.
“The idea behind this webinar series is to create awareness or enlighten researchers, institutions, and librarians as to the impact of PIDs,” he said.
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To make their project sustainable, Urooj Nizami with Public Knowledge Project outlined an action plan.
“Our main focus is to expand on these initial interactions by formalizing Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs), organizing upcoming events, carefully exploring translation options, and collaborating with like-minded organizations to strengthen our support for Indonesian publishing,” she said. “Additionally, we are contemplating a pilot program aimed at establishing a local liaison initiative, wherein an individual will be hired to facilitate communication between PKP and local universities, scholarly societies, publishers, and government bodies.”
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Read more about the projects above from our announcements about the first, second, and third round of awardees.
The next GPF cycle will run from 3 April–3 May 2024, so stay tuned for the announcement. Visit our Global Participation Fund page for more information and a list of frequently asked questions. You can also view the GPF showcase webinar replay and download the materials.
