How PIDs are facilitating scholarly communication
Persistent Identifiers empower the community to create an interconnected research ecosystem. Organizations, scientists, and their research are all part of this very important research infrastructure as it creates a reliable way to identify and attribute information.
The impact of PIDs has been substantial, from improved ease of access and increased trust in scholarly research to opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations. The growing call for more transparency across all areas of scholarly communication also supports the wider adoption of PIDs. We have also seen PIDs such as Ringgold Identifiers enable stakeholders to ensure data interoperability and help academic and publishing organizations make strategic decisions. And all this is just the tip of the iceberg. Persistent identifiers facilitate research sharing, validation, use, reuse, and more.
But what are persistent identifiers?
A persistent identifier is an actionable reference given to a document, file, webpage, or object that remains tied to it, allowing anyone to use the identifier to find its source and other information associated with it. Persistent identifiers used in research infrastructure enable researchers to automatically share their results and career profiles across data systems. This allows for accurate mapping of scientific progress and the researcher's achievements.
As the research ecosystem becomes increasingly data-intensive, the scholarly community cannot delay innovations that improve the pace at which research content is discovered, accessed, and used. Persistent identifiers connect researchers with their work and the organizations they belong. DOIs are great examples of persistent identifiers that carry all the information about the source in its metadata. They ensure accurate citations and linking of information to their sources to ensure proper credit is given to the owners. PIDs are also essential for rekeying metadata and automatically updating and populating research data to save time.
While much of the focus for PIDs has been on downstream research outputs like journal articles, these tools are also critical for early-stage research. Emerging ideas and emerging scientists need the same attribution and recognition for their upstream work.
How PIDs are used by stakeholders across the scholarly community
For researchers
Researchers' widespread adoption of PIDs has saved them countless hours previously spent on storing and sharing research data. PIDs have also made it easy for researchers to find the information they need for their work, collaborate with other researchers in their field, and submit their work for publishing.
As previously mentioned, citations are important to the researcher's career, and PIDs make it possible for people who use research to recognize their owners. This, in turn, increases a researcher's reputation and access to research grants while improving the publisher's ability to validate and publish their work hastily.
For organizations
Scientific societies and associations use PIDs to link them with members and their research. It allows organizations to monitor the impact and progress of research outputs from their grants and gain the accurate information needed for promotions and tenure applications. Additionally, publishers adopt the use of PIDS when validating manuscript submissions as it enables peer reviewers to ensure that the content meets research integrity standards.
For the wider community
The public has a significant role to play in the progress of science. Therefore, world learners must be able to easily find research and connect researchers with their work through persistent identifiers. On a broader scale, the accessibility of information about a piece of research helps build public trust in science. And when this is established, the wider community, including researchers from other fields, will be able to reuse research, build upon it, and connect with authors.
Conclusion
At Morressier, we support the drive for data interconnectivity in early-stage research. That is why we integrated CCC Ringgold Identifiers and ORCiD identifiers to make it easy for the scientific community to capture, manage and access research data.
We are constantly finding new ways to ensure efficiency in the way we accelerate early-stage research. Get in touch with us to learn more about our infrastructure.
