Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda

Community Engagement Manager

Biography

Obanda joined Crossref in 2023 to work with Crossref Ambassadors to effectively engage their communities and support Crossref’s outreach initiatives. Obanda is passionate about building an inclusive research ecosystem where researchers across the globe can easily access scientific knowledge and make meaningful connections. His previous experience includes social entrepreneurship and science communication. For fun, Obanda likes to explore historical sites and experience the sunset.

ORCID iD

0000-0002-2111-7780

Johanssen Obanda's latest writing

Strengthening Scholarly Publishing in Africa

Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda, Monday, Sep 14, 2026

In WebinarsCollaborationCommunity

Leave a comment

French version –– Version française

Strengthening Scholarly Publishing in Africa is a collaborative webinar series bringing together ASSAf, Crossref, DOAJ, EIFL, and PKP to share practical guidance, resources, and approaches for strengthening the publishing ecosystem in the region. This series responds to the growing interest in open access, digital publishing, stronger editorial practices, and greater visibility of research publishing across Africa. Each partner organisation has long experience of building that capacity in the area of their expertise. In this series, we’re coming together to offer a more holistic learning experience to the community of African publishers, putting different aspects of the publishing process in their broader context.

Reflections from the Crossref Ambassador Community

Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda, Monday, Mar 16, 2026

In CollaborationCommunity

Leave a comment

Crossref Ambassadors act as local points of contact, meeting editors, librarians, researchers, and institutions to help them navigate Crossref services and understand how strong metadata supports visibility, integrity, and trust in research. They explain how to participate in our rich network of connections between works, people, and institutions, in ways that make sense in their own contexts. And last year, being our 25th anniversary, Ambassadors also massively contributed to our celebrations!

Celebrating Noyam Journals’ Metadata Award

Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda, Tuesday, Nov 4, 2025

In CommunityMetadata Awards

Leave a comment

Noyam Journals, based in Accra, Ghana, was recently recognised for the completeness of its metadata through the Crossref Metadata Award, part of our 25th anniversary celebrations. Noyam was one of six publishers worldwide to receive the award and stood out as a leader among members of our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program.

Enhancing repository integration with Crossref

Repositories are home to a wide range of scholarly content; they often archive theses, dissertations, preprints, datasets, and other valuable outputs. These records are an important part of the research ecosystem and should be connected to the broader scholarly record. But to truly serve their purpose, repository records need to be connected to each other, to the broader research ecosystem, and to the people behind the research. Metadata is what makes that possible. Enhancing metadata is a way to tell a fuller, more accurate story of research. It helps surface relationships between works, people, funders, and institutions, and allows us as a community to build and use a more connected, more useful network of knowledge - what Crossref calls the ‘Research Nexus’.

Crossref at Beijing International Book Fair 2025

Johanssen Obanda

Johanssen Obanda, Thursday, Jul 24, 2025

In CommunityMeetings

Leave a comment

This June, we presented at the Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) and connected directly with our growing community in China. With a surge of interest from Chinese publishers and partners, it was clear: there’s a strong and rising curiosity around how metadata plays a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

Read all of Johanssen Obanda's posts »