We are delighted to share the news that Joy Owango, Executive Director of TCC Africa (Training Centre in Communication), is the opening keynote speaker for this year’s NISO Plus Global/Online conference! She will deliver her presentation, “From Persistent Identifiers to Persistent Intelligence: How DOCiD Connects Human Knowledge, AI Systems, and Research Trust through Standards,” on Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 9:45–10:45 am EDT.
TCC Africa is an award-winning trust established in 2006 to strengthen research capacity, scholarly communication, and open science across Africa. There Joy provides strategic leadership for programs focused on open science advocacy, research capacity strengthening, scholarly communication, digital research infrastructure, and research management systems. Her work supports institutions in adopting interoperable and sustainable approaches to research information management while helping researchers increase the visibility and influence of their work. She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, can be responsibly integrated into research ecosystems to strengthen knowledge creation, sharing, and impact.
Joy is also a leading voice in advancing persistent identifier (PID) infrastructure in Africa through the Africa PID Alliance, a TCC Africa program that promotes the adoption of standards-based, interoperable research infrastructure. The Alliance works to connect researchers, institutions, funders, grants, projects, datasets, publications, and other research outputs through globally recognized identifier systems, thereby improving research discoverability, accountability, and impact assessment across the continent.
Joy’s opening keynote will explore how DOCiD, an innovative framework she is helping to develop and advance, extends the role of persistent identifiers beyond identification toward persistent intelligence by creating standards-based digital containers that connect researchers, institutions, grants, datasets, Indigenous knowledge, grey literature, and scholarly outputs into interoperable knowledge graphs. Through standards-aligned metadata, FAIR Digital Object principles, and PID interoperability, DOCiD enables intelligent systems to understand not only what an object is, but also its provenance, relationships, permissions, cultural context, and impact. She will demonstrate how standards-driven PID ecosystems can become the foundation for trustworthy AI, research integrity, and equitable scholarly communication, particularly in underrepresented knowledge systems across Africa and the Global South.
“With her talk touching on PIDs, metadata, and innovative uses of artificial intelligence in scholarly communications, Joy’s work is well aligned with the theme of this year’s NISO Plus virtual conference, ‘Connecting Human Futures with Intelligent Systems through Standards,'” said Mary Beth Barilla, Director of Business Development and Communications at NISO. “We look forward to both the session and the lively conversations that are sure to follow!”
To catch Joy’s keynote, register now for NISO Plus Global/Online! Discounts are available for NISO members, residents of LMIC, and groups; sign up by August 11 for early-bird rates.
