Arabic Digital Reform Institute

Arabic Digital Reform Institute Our Vision The Arabic Digital Reform Institute (ADRI) is a social enterprise from New Zealand that aspires to revolutionise the current practices in creating knowledge in Arabic. In doing so, ADRI aims to address the social issue of limited availability of Arabic scientific content online. As the majority of Arabic research is currently stored in hard copies rather than online, it considerably restricts the accessibility of such content to be read, utilised or cited by the wider communities. The dilemma in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is even more pronounced. Whilst academic content is often produced in Arabic, the poor technology infrastructure in these societies ensures that it is never published or shared with others for use or scrutiny. This therefore has an impact on education which then filters down to produce societal challenges. Our Mission Using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cloud technologies, ADRI is aiming to facilitate effective mechanisms of publishing, translating and accessing Arabic content worldwide. ADRI’s foremost project is a digital academic platform for providing access to academic literature, with full research capabilities for the Arabic language. ADRI platform will allow global academics, researchers, business personnel, and media institutions, to access Arabic content at the touch of a button and share it with a few clicks. This is a level of publishing that strives to fully utilise the latest developments in technology, particularly automated translation and Optical Character Recognition. ADRI also seeks to introduce guidelines for the academic handling of the Arabic scientific literature, and to also facilitate a robust communication framework between both Arab universities and other academics globally. Our Values Arabic Language: Arabic language is a treasure to be empowered for the good of the whole humanity. Academic Integrity: ADRI aims to build long lasting bindings with the academic communities and therefore holds dearly its respect to honesty, trust, scholarship and integrity throughout its enterprise. Impartiality: As an academic institute, ADRI endorses no political view, or ideology, or bias; and it abides itself only to the academic progress among the Arabic speaking communities in the world. Professionalism: Among ADRIs aspirations, is to become a leader in defining and maintaining scholarly standards and procedures in the Arabic academia. Hence, we are proud of our knowledge and commitment of these standards and will strive to advance them for the benefits of the Arabic communities. Impact ADRI’s point of difference is that we are a social enterprise that possesses a sustainable business model for the service delivery of Arabic content digitisation. Our model is not reliant on outside funding, a factor which ensures our mission is reasonably guaranteed with income generated through our own services. What further sets us apart is our utilisation of cloud services; it allows for an affordable pricing model for our clients. Furthermore, ADRI’s platform is built on anonymised technologies that makes it capable of catering to almost all technological infrastructures of client universities regardless of their IT environment. Our business aims to create an inclusive academic network that gives particular attention to communities within the less developed countries of the region. In this context, we are currently establishing initial talks with international organisations such as ITU for setting up a development project for the digital inclusion of academic institutions in the LDCs of the MENA region. Our service structure comprises 4 unique services, catered with a systemic delivery model according to international standards. Our primary service is the Arabic research platform, which brandishes a unique mechanism for the incorporation of new clients through a simple and practical approach. It also offers an immense amount of research and content allowing students and academics to pursue global Arabic literature on a one single platform and from a myriad Arab and foreign publishers. The secondary service is the repository as a service, which represents ADRI’s efforts towards standardising Arabic knowledge management within the universities themselves. This product represents an Arabic application for document management. It allows universities, to digitise their physical content, translate foreign knowledge and publish their research all from one system and at fractions of a second time rate. Furthermore, a number of institutions such as ESCWA, ITU Arab Regional Office, and Arab Thought Foundation are working on Arabic Digital Content, but do not offer any comparable platform or IT services in the academic field such as what ADRI provides. ADRI’s work is also unique in its contributions to the WSIS Action lines for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular WSIS Action Lines C2, C3, C4, C7, C8 and C11; plus SDGs 4 (Quality Education), 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Improving the accessibility of Arabic academic content online will help Arabic Universities increase citations per paper and therefore improving their QS international rankings. This is a primary international benchmark per which the academic performance of universities is measured. This ranking also plays a primary role in the universities financial status where the annual budget of each university is often enhanced per the QS ranking improvement; or diminished where the ranking deteriorates. Success can also be measured by the number of subscribers to our platform. To date, ADRI has completed its product development and finalised the testing of its prototypes. At this stage, we are confident about our products’ ability to resolve the issues in our target market. ADRI has also compounded a comprehensive network of academics and business supporters, as well as government sponsors from NZ and the Middle East. Our next steps involve reaching out to the market and initiating our sales strategy which has been scoped through a phased plan. Within each phase, ADRI has established certain milestones and deliverables to achieve over time. The successful delivery of this vision will be measured through a gradual achievement of each of these milestones throughout the strategy. Scale Alongside ADRI’s market strategy, we have developed an extensive operational strategy. ADRI aims to establish full time operation in the next 6 months and initiating a local presence in the Middle East close to our target market. After achieving a few of these strategic milestones, we then aim to establish full representation of our operations in the majority of our client countries. Partnership ADRI thrives on a partnership philosophy where the work of few often prevail in quality and magnitude in comparison to a soloist effort. And therefore, ADRI has been fortunate of orchestrating a network of impactful partners to aggregate the support its required to achieve its ambitions. And by the same token we invite all interest groups, international organisations and the academic communities to reach out at anytime and share their feedback and recommendations with us. It’s our collective efforts that could paint a better tomorrow for us all. The ADRI digital platform will be available on a subscription basis from January 2019, either through an organisational or individual subscription. ARABIC DIGITAL REFORM INSTITUTE contact@adri.co.nz Wellington New Zealand