We hosted Bénédicte Kuntziger as our guest in this session. Bénédicte is the support, trainer, and community engagement lead at HAL and she guided attendees through the following:
- Introduction to the multifunctional French Open Archive, HAL, and key factors driving its expansion
- HAL functionalities and services for researchers, research communities and institutions
- Ways to access content on HAL
- Bilinguality and Multilingualism: How HAL bridges between the anglophone and francophone research communities
- Interoperability in HAL to connect research items across repository systems
- Collections on HAL that are of particular relevance to African researchers (collections which are focused on a variety of African topics)
Watch the recording
The slides are available at
Speaker’s Profile:
Bénédicte Kuntziger
Bénédicte Kuntziger has been a documentation engineer at CNRS for over 30 years. She first worked in research laboratories before moving to a research library specializing in archaeology. Since 2013, she has been involved in Open Science, with a particular expertise in open access to publications. At CCSD (the Center for Direct Scientific Communication), she leads the support, training, and community engagement team for HAL, the French national open-access archive.
Questions that were addressed during the session
Are there local installations of HAL at African institutions?
Sure! Collections like “Afrique(s)” and others that focus on francophone Africa are highly relevant. There are also thematic collections on topics like public health, agriculture, and environmental sciences that are very pertinent to African research priorities. We’re eager to support even more African-specific collections in the near future!
Do you have policies or guidelines in place for the use of HAL with regards to file submission, collection creation and research discovery?
Absolutely! HAL operates under clear and open policies that ensure high-quality submissions. We encourage authors to submit their full texts when possible, maintain proper metadata, and organize content into thematic collections. This structure improves both discoverability and long-term access, making it easier for African researchers to share and find relevant work.
Does HAL provide customized sub repositories for research communities?
We provide customized portals for institutions or customized collections for laboratories, research projects, conferences etc…. Collections could be used by Francophone communities to improve discoverability of their work.
Could you highlight examples of collections on HAL that are of particular relevance to African researchers?
Yes, there are ongoing conversations and a few collaborations where African institutions are exploring using HAL or adapting its model. While full local installations are still growing, we are very excited to see interest from African universities and research centers who want to set up customized spaces within HAL to showcase their research outputs.
How do you see HAL contributing to the broader Open Science movement in Africa, and what future opportunities exist for collaboration?
HAL could serve as an example demonstrating that a strong national policy and strong commitments are key factors in building a national open archive embraced by research communities.
HAL is open to all research communities, and to researchers affiliated to foreign academic institutions. They can deposit files, create collections and use HAL to disseminate their scientific work.
The interoperability of HAL with Episciences, a diamond Open Access scientific publishing platform could also be highly valuable.
Finally, HAL provides some tools to export and retrieve publications, open APIs, and can be harvested by OAI-PMH (collections for instance).
To what extent does HAL support multilingualism?
HAL is a multilingual archive, with 26% of texts in French and 70% in English. HAL enables researchers to submit texts in their native languages, thereby supporting local languages in research;
How African Researchers and Institutions Can Gain Insights and Advantages from the HAL Session
Understanding the Value of Open Archiving
African researchers learned how open archives like HAL can preserve and increase the visibility of their work, ensuring broader dissemination without access barriers. They gained insights into how HAL fits within the global Open Science ecosystem and why early adoption benefits both individual researchers and institutions.
Exploring Opportunities for Local Customization
The session highlighted that African institutions could create their own collections or portals within HAL, tailored to regional research outputs. This opens a pathway for African universities to independently manage, promote, and archive their scholarly outputs while benefiting from HAL’s infrastructure.
Learning about Best Practices for Submission and Discovery
Participants gained a better understanding of the submission policies and guidelines, helping them organize research outputs effectively. Good metadata practices, proper categorization, and open access to full texts were emphasized to maximize research visibility and impact.
Discovering Relevant Thematic Collections
The webinar shed light on existing HAL collections relevant to African contexts, such as studies on public health, education, agriculture, and climate change. Researchers saw examples of how thematic organization can connect their work to global conversations while highlighting Africa-specific priorities.
Recognizing Collaboration and Networking Potential
African researchers and librarians learned that working with HAL provides networking opportunities with European and global peers. Building collections and engaging with existing ones fosters collaborative research projects and helps integrate African science into global knowledge systems.
Encouraging Strategic Adoption of Open Science Tools
The session served as a call to action for African institutions to actively participate in the Open Science movement by adopting trusted platforms like HAL. It emphasized the strategic advantage of early involvement in open archiving, improving both institutional reputation and researcher visibility on a global scale.
Related resources
HAL’s website: https://hal.science/?lang=en
HAL’s Documentation API: https://api.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs
The documentation is currently being translated into English and is only available in French for now but you can see :
About the webinar series
This webinar series is co-organized by UbuntuNet Alliance (https://ubuntunet.net/) and Access 2 Perspectives (https://access2perspectives.org/) and supported by the African Open Science Platform (AOSP; https://aosp.org.za/)