Advancing Research Through DataCite’s Global Access Fund: Mekelle University, Ethiopia

Mekelle University (MU), founded in 2000 and located in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, is a research-intensive institution dedicated to advancing knowledge, economic growth, and social welfare both nationally and internationally. As a founding member of the Ethiopian Research Universities Forum in 2025, MU is committed to elevating the visibility and impact of Ethiopian research on the global stage. A significant part of this mission involves ensuring our research is visible, accessible, and impactful. However, a critical gap was identified: a vast repository of valuable scholarly outputs, including postgraduate theses, dissertations, and datasets, remained largely invisible to the global research community because they lacked persistent identifiers (PIDs) like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). This made them difficult to cite, track, and reuse, limiting their potential impact.