What is a persistent identifier?
Good research data management is characterised, among other things, by the fact that scientific data sets can be easily reused by third parties. This primarily involves standardised standards and formats and providing the datasets with sufficient metadata. However, this alone is not enough, as a potential interested party must also be able to find the data before it can be reused.
A persistent identifier is defined as a permanent (persistent) digital identifier, consisting of numbers and/or alphanumeric characters, which is assigned to a dataset (or another digital object) and refers directly to it.
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) has emerged as the standard for data and digital objects. A DOI can be used to identify an object in a similar way to an ISBN. It has the function of localising the object precisely so that scientific results can be cited reliably and in a standardised form.
A DOI identifier could look like this, for example:
Image: https://forschungsdaten.info/fileadmin/kooperationen/bwfdm/fdm/5-finden-und-nachnutzen/3-persistente-identifikatoren/aufbau-pid.jpg
The repositories are responsible for assigning DOIs. Researchers should only prioritise ensuring that the repository uses persistent identifiers.
ORCID (Open Research Contributor Identification Initiative) was developed to uniquely identify individuals. Here, a person is assigned a numerical identifier so that they can be identified even if their name or institution changes. The ORCID ID is assigned via self-registration. The creators enter the information in their ORCID profile themselves.
Today's resource is the ORCID factsheet that shows you how easy it is to get your own ORCID ID. So, if you don't have an ORCID ID already, you should get one today!