UCT eResearch leads UCT’s membership in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
The University of Cape Town (UCT) has established an organisational publisher account on the IATI Registry, enabling research groups across the university to publish their project information under the UCT account. This marks an important step in strengthening transparency, open research practices and visibility of institutionally funded work.
IATI is a global, multi‑stakeholder effort created to improve the openness of aid, development and research‑related activities. It is used by governments, multilateral agencies, NGOs and a growing number of academic institutions seeking to align with global expectations for open reporting. IATI provides a widely adopted, machine‑readable data standard that enables organisations to publish structured information about funding flows, project activities, partnerships and outcomes.
By offering a shared standard, IATI enables greater transparency (for funders, researchers, policymakers, and the public), improved coordination across organisations working in similar domains, more effective tracking of investments and project results, as well as increased global discoverability of development and research work.
Director of the UCT eResearch Centre, Professor Mattia Vaccari, explained that the IATI Publisher has been built to support organisations that publish a limited number of datasets, building upon their development and humanitarian activities.
“It is built on Open Source software and provides an invaluable resource for anyone involved in development or humanitarian aid,” he said. “We are thus honoured to be part of the IATI community.”
The move to join IATI forms part of eResearch’s broader work to support responsible data management practices and ensure that UCT research outputs are visible and usable at global scale.
Some of the many benefits to publishing with IATI include:
- Increased visibility of research projects through a globally indexed open database;
- Compliance with emerging funder expectations, as several international funders now reference IATI in their reporting requirements;
- Machine‑readable, AI‑optimised outputs that support automated discovery and analysis;
- Better coordination and knowledge‑sharing across research and development partners.
With six UCT research groups already publishing datasets to the IATI registry, adoption continues to grow across disciplines.
Publishing to IATI: instructions for UCT researchers
It’s easy to get started. UCT is the registered Publisher. Researchers who need to publish project information to IATI do so under the institutional account.
Instructions for new users:
- Register as a new user, using your UCT email account, at the IATI Registry: https://iatiregistry.org/register
- Once registered, send your IATI username to the UCT eResearch team via eresearch@uct.ac.za or log a Service Now Request.
- eResearch will add you to the UCT Publisher account immediately and you will receive an automated email from IATI confirming your access
- For general queries or troubleshooting, consult IATI’s support resources and FAQs.
Future support
As part of UCT’s ongoing alignment of research support services, responsibility for IATI user support and training will gradually transition from eResearch to the UCT Libraries’ Digital Scholarship team. This will position IATI publishing alongside other open scholarship and research visibility services offered by the Libraries.