ORCID’s Global Participation Fund, launched in 2022, has distributed 26 grants totalling $465,000 to 17 countries in the Global South to date. Recipients include organizations in countries with low- and lower-middle-income economies, as defined by the World Bank as well as those developing open-source platforms used in those countries. Grants specifically help communities either work within local contexts to increase ORCID adoption or create and enhance technical integrations to support the realization of the benefits provided by the use of ORCID.
One of the past grantees, the Africa Bioethics Network (ABN), was awarded nearly $20k in the GPF’s third grant cycle in early 2024 for its proposal to enhance ORCID awareness, adoption, and integration across the Sub-Saharan African bioethics community. ABN champions a deep understanding of bioethical concerns and promotes human rights and dignity universally. Dedicated to enriching both society’s foundational areas and intellectual pursuits, ABN offers invaluable resources, educational programs, and networking prospects. ABN’s focus of elevating research ethics and bioethics in Africa aligns perfectly with the goals of the GPF.
According to Mercury Shitindo, the project’s Principal Investigator, bioethics researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) often face interconnected structural challenges—from institutional policy gaps and limited digital infrastructure to constrained resources and underrepresentation in global research systems. The region’s valuable contributions are frequently obscured by fragmented researcher identification and inadequate documentation. Shitindo recognized that the GPF grant offered an opportunity to address these systemic issues and build infrastructure for lasting change by mainstreaming ORCID across African bioethics communities.
“The key was integration, not just adoption,” said Shitindo. “We embedded ORCID into the systems bioethics researchers already use—publishing, mentoring, training, and ethics review. By building on ABN’s existing programs and partnerships, we created a sustainable model that enhances research visibility while strengthening research systems and ethical infrastructure across the region.”
Growing an ORCID Community of Practice
Shitindo knew that an ORCID presence in SSA’s bioethics community would help streamline research processes from authorship to grant reporting while enhancing visibility, collaboration, and efficiency in the African bioethics landscape.
Over the 12-month grant period, the project built a vibrant ORCID Community of Practice (CoP) with more than one hundred active members while reaching more than 1,000 stakeholders across 12 countries in SSA. It also conducted an extensive landscape analysis, organized high-impact training sessions, and produced three foundational documents to guide the organization’s strategic growth and roadmap for long-term sustainability. The project accomplished the technical achievement of integrating ORCID into ABN workflows, such as the African Journal of Bioethics (AJB) and BEACON Mentorship Program, which connects early-career professionals with experienced mentors across Africa to build capacity in bioethics.
The project has met its objectives by not only elevating awareness across SSA around ORCID’s role of improving research visibility and integrity while enhancing technical capacity across institutions, but also establishing strategic partnerships to ensure that the CoP is sustainable beyond the grant period. This was accomplished because ABN leveraged existing networks, training programs, and digital platforms to foster a thriving bioethics research community across Africa.
“We are thrilled to see that Africa Bioethics Network has laid a foundation for a sustainable ORCID Community of Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa for the bioethics research community.” said Ivo Wijnbergen, ORCID Director of Engagement. “This project clearly demonstrates a multiplier effect of positive impact by leveraging ORCID’s vast community resources to provide ongoing support for the bioethics research community in this region, helping the community to become increasingly interconnected and transparent, saving researchers time and reducing administrative burden, while making their critical scientific contributions more globally discoverable.”
Beyond the GPF grant cycle
With a new roadmap document and sustainability plan, ABN set a foundation for enhanced research visibility, ethical accountability, and stronger institutional adoption of ORCID across Africa.
Additionally, ABN has a three-tier sustainability approach encompassing short-term initiatives (0–12 months), medium-term strategies (12–36 months), and long-term vision (36+ months). Key components include membership growth mechanisms, program alignment with existing ABN initiatives, resource optimization through digital platforms, and strategic institutional partnerships.
While each GPF grantee might have a unique set of challenges and opportunities that require a specialized strategic plan to increase adoption and awareness in a given country, region, or in a specific field of research, the support from the GPF has the effect of helping communities help themselves, which, in turns, helps elevate research globally as ORCID adoption grows.
This is because where ORCID—and an array of other PIDs—are present in research community workflows, there is more trust, visibility, and time given back to researchers doing the work that matters most. All of these benefits to the regional research community also ripple outward to the entire global community.
Stay tuned for the next GPF grant cycle opening in October. For more information about the GPF, visit the website for FAQs and more.
