PIDs are long-lasting digital links to research entities like journal articles, researchers, or institutions. CRKN promotes PID adoption, advocates for best practices, fosters collaboration, and provides training and resources to integrate PIDs throughout the research lifecycle. CRKN’s PID program currently focuses on supporting PIDs for people (ORCID iDs) and PIDs for research data (DOIs), while also developing a national strategy for broader PID implementation.
PID Primer
A persistent identifier (typically referred to as a PID) is a long-lasting digital code that uniquely identifies entities (like people, places, or things) in the research ecosystem. A PID is comprised of two parts: a unique code that identifies the resource and a service that facilitates finding the resource even if its location changes.
For example, a DOI uniquely identifies a research output (research article, book, dataset) and a registration agency such as DataCite provides the service that allows the DOI to resolve across time.
Research generates an enormous amount of information about people, places, and things. This information is typically contained by many different software systems, including institutional, regional, or national grant application systems and repositories. PIDs can interlink this information, enabling the long-term accessibility, interconnection, accuracy, and credibility of academic work.
- PIDs uniquely identify entities (people, places, things) involved in knowledge production. For example, an ORCID iD can uniquely identify and disambiguate researchers with the same name to ensure correct and clear attribution.
- PIDs are designed to address the problem of persistence and accessing cited resources in academic work. URLs break, but PIDs reliably point to digital entities across borders, disciplines, time, and systems.
- PID integrations ensure scholars and institutions save critical time and resources by reducing administrative burden. For example, ORCID helps to reduce administrative burden by supporting interoperability across publishing and funder systems removing the need to manually re-enter researcher information
- Implementing PIDs helps to connect siloed systems across the digital research infrastructure landscape in a standardized way, both nationally and internationally.
PIDs support Canadian institutions in meeting the goals of open knowledge initiatives, including the FAIR Principles, which directly highlight the importance of PIDs.
There are many different types of PIDs commonly used in the Canadian research ecosystem including ORCID iDs, DataCite and Crossref DOIs (digital object identifiers), Research Organization Registry (ROR) IDs, and Archival Resource Keys (ARKs), among others.
There are two national PID consortia in Canada, both administered by CRKN: ORICD-CA since 2017 and DataCite Canada (DCAN) since 2020. DataCite Canada is co-managed with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Members of these consortia include Canadian universities, government departments, research centres, journal publishers, and more.
Momentum for PID development in Canada has recently been driven by the work of the Canadian Persistent Identifier Advisory Committee (CPIDAC), composed of a broad range of Canadian stakeholders including funders, universities, government, infrastructure organizations, and library consortia from across the country.
The National PID Strategy
The National PID Strategy provides guidance for ongoing PID strategy development and implementation efforts, including in terms of recommendations for candidate PIDs, assessment of strategic next steps, and to help organizations in Canada leading decision-making processes for PID initiatives.
PID Program Governance
The PID Program at CRKN administers and supports three committees. The ORCID-CA Governing Committee (OCGC) and the DataCite Canada Governing Committee (DCCGC) are comprised of ten members elected by the membership of each consortium. The governing committees provide guidance and oversight for each consortium. The Canadian Persistent Identifier Advisory Committee (CPIDAC) is comprised of PID stakeholders from across the country and provides strategic guidance for the PID Program, the governing committees, and the development of a national PID strategy for Canada.