One of SomaliREN's critical mission is to build research and education content, and has this as one of its three main pillars called 'content pillar.' After completing the first pillar of Connectivity, providing Internet connectivity services to 50+ campuses of 20 research and education member institutions, SomaliREN has started to build services on top of the connectivity pillar and has successfully deployed several essential services such as;
1. Somali Research and Education Repository (sorer.somaliren.org.so)
2. SomaliREN Video Conference System (vc.somaliren.org.so)
3. SomaliREN Identity Federation (under development)
4. SomaliREN Virtual Computing Lab (virlab.somaliren.org.so)
5. SomaliREN Event Management(events.somaliren.org.so)
All of these services are operational(or under development) and ready to use for member institutions. We believe this will add a significant value to our member institutions and help their journey of becoming a digitally-driven institution.
Introduction to Somali Research and Education Repository (hereafter called “SORER”)
SORER is an open access centralized multi-institutional digital repository system that enables Somali higher education and research institutions to host their research and educational resources for greater visibility and increased access. The uploaded resources will be available metadata search engines compliant with the OAI-PMH standard, using Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). SORER is implemented and operated by Somali Research and Education Network (SomaliREN) as one of its key mission to improve and facilitate research work among Somali higher education and research institutions. AII universities and research institutions will contribute to the SORER platform and provide all Open Access. The project aims to assist our research and higher education institutions in increasing their research output and encouraging local content production.
The research outputs produced by local universities and research institutions were not adequately showcased to interested constituencies and citizens outside academic institutions. This has negatively branded the local institutions as in-competent to produce any form of research content. The printed copies of students' theses and dissertations were archived inside the university, and nobody saw after their defending day.
SORER is a new initiative that is meant to be a centralized open access multi-institutional digital repository implemented and managed by SomaliREN in collaboration with experts from the University of Catania, and Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics(INFN), Catania, Italy.
Here is the link to virtual meeting: http://bit.ly/sorer_technical_workshop