National PID strategies: opportunities for collaboration and alignment

This potential activity will be relevant to the existing Persistent Identifiers Interest Group (PID IG), where we have previously shared updates, but will be focused on specific challenges in the national context: multi-disciplinary, policy-driven PID engagement and integration, for example. As such, it will complement the PID IG’s blend of project and provider updates and cross-PID community thematic discussions with an emphasis on specific implementation and coordination challenges.

Summary of each national strategy:

Australia: 

Australia is served by two PID consortia: an ORCID consortium led by the Australian Access Federation, and a DataCite consortium led by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). Through its portfolio, including the Research Data Australia (RDA) portal, research vocabularies, innovative training approaches, cloud services, and funding for cutting edge infrastructure projects, ARDC relies on a suite of PID services to identify and describe a wide range of entities in the research process, from samples (using the International Geo Sample Number)  to projects (which are identified using the Research Activity Identifier). By providing PIDs, participating in the global PID community, and helping to support the development and sustainability of critical PID services, ARDC helps to deliver a competitive advantage for Australian researchers, and to help to capture and showcase the impact of investments in Australian research.

Canada:

Canada has been developing a number of national PID strategies under the direction of a number of national agencies, such as Research Data Canada, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, and the Portage Network. These include national ORCID and DataCite consortia/agencies, as well as a report on PIDs in the national context (currently undergoing a major revision). A new national organization (NDRIO) is in the process of forming, and it will have a remit for research data management, research software, and high performance computing. The anticipation is that NDRIO will be a major source of direction and support for a national PID strategy.

Finland:

There is an active Finnish cross sector PID Forum for many years and national DataCite and ORCID consortia. Within the national Open Science Coordination (openscience.fi) a PID policy and guidelines for research organisations have been produced. Also, the URN is commonly used. There are ongoing efforts to introduce a wide range of persistent identifiers and other identifiers and codes within the national CRIS system (research.fi). Semantic interoperability is also supported by a set of other national services (https://tietomallit.suomi.fi/, https://koodistot.suomi.fi/, https://sanastot.suomi.fi/ and http://finto.fi/en/ )

Netherlands: 

In the Netherlands, there are several PID services embedded in specific use cases.  Each (see below) operates independently from the others with a low level of coordination between them. SURF is presently developing a national framework to increase PID coordination and provide a venue for a PID advisory board. This board would be tasked with maintaining a current account of Dutch PID priorities, while remaining agile in the face of national and international developments. An important recent step towards a national PID roadmap is the recent co-development of a PID strategy with/for the Dutch Research Council (national research funder). Development towards a national PID roadmap coincides with broader interest in open infrastructures. Of particular relevance to NL PID activities is the ongoing exploration of a Netherlands Open Knowledge Base (NL OKB).

NL PID Landscape at a glance:

ORCID - Researcher, contributor ID (ORCID-NL consortium)

ISNI - Author ID, University Libraries (registrant) 

DOI - HSS data, EASY (DANS)

DOI - HSS data, during research, DataverseNL, (DANS)

DOI - data, Datacite (41 repository accounts via 4TU) 

ePIC - data, handle for datasets during research (SURF)

PURL - objects/collections, Biodiversity 

varius - objects/data, Digital Cultural Heritage (pid guide)

URN:NBN - Publications,  National Library of the Netherlands

*additional PIDs of interest: RoR, RAiD, GrantID

UK: 

Jisc has been leading a PIDs for Open Access project, to develop and refine a national strategy and roadmap for persistent identifiers to enhance access to open research. This work has built on the 2019 report Developing a persistent identifier roadmap for open access to UK research, which recommended that the UK community explore the potential for a ‘multi-PID consortium’ to optimise access and adoption of the five priority PIDs (grants, people, outputs, organisations and projects) for open research. This programme has been overseen by a national stakeholder group which brought together institutions, sector bodies, funders, publishers, repository providers, research administrators, scholarly societies, and other sector groups. The next stage is to develop the business case for setting up the multi-PID consortium and establish the Research Identifier National Coordinating Council (RINCC). The RINCC will focus on governance and community accountability, while the consortium would be designed to maximise access to, and the utility of, priority PID services in the UK and in the international systems upon which UK research communication depends.
 

South America:

Two Latin American cases (Brazil and Peru) will be presented showing national approaches regarding research information management, through the implementation of coordinated actions towards a national approach of research infrastructure.

Brazilian research is becoming more visible internationally. The number of articles published has increased substantially, with an average growth of 10.7% per year, a rate five times higher than the world average, moving the country into the top 15 in terms of research productivity. Much of this growth can be traced to progressive government policies and programs that support both research projects and the information infrastructure needed for collaboration and dissemination of results. The CONECTI-ORCID consortium, led by CAPES, involves key government stakeholders.

In Peru, the PerúCRIS (CONCYTEC) project aims to establish, develop, and operate the country’s National Information Network on Science, Technology and Technological Innovation in CTI, allowing the consolidation and management of scientific and academic information throughout Peru. It will also enable the generation of statistics to support decision-making – at the institutional, regional, sectoral, and national levels – in addition to making the activities, capacities, and scientific production of Peruvian researchers globally visible.
Building the National Information Network in CTI requires the incorporation of best practices in the research information management. To achieve this goal, CONCYTEC has established strategic alliances with key institutions in the international open science community — DURASPACE, euroCRIS, LA Referencia, COAR, and ORCID.
 
The idea of showing these two cases is to discuss the heterogeneity of standard and international best practices around research information management in the Latin American region, and highlight how some organizations can play an important role in getting to some regional consensus, aligned to international discussions.

Global Open Research Commons (GORC) IG:

There is an emerging effort coming from a number of international data management organizations, including RDA’s Global Open Research Commons (GORC) IG (established), and the GORC Benchmarking WG (in review). These efforts are intended to develop a definition and typology of a global research commons, and develop a set of benchmarks that can be used to compare platforms globally. CODATA is working with colleagues in the Chinese Academy of Sciences on a project to look in more detail at a number of “global open science commons”. Both organizations are joined by WDS and GO FAIR in the Data Together context to consider how all four groups can work together to advance the discussion around a GORC.