Persistent identifiers for instruments and facilities: Current state, challenges, and opportunities

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) are central to the vision of open science described in the FAIR Principles. However, the use of PIDs for scientific instruments and facilities is decentralized and fragmented. This project aims to develop community-based standards, guidelines, and best practices for how and why PIDs can be assigned to facilities and instruments. We hosted several online and in-person focus groups and discussions, cumulating in a two-day in-person workshop featuring stakeholders from a variety of organizations and disciplines, such as instrument and facilities operators, PID infrastructure providers, researchers who use instruments and facilities, journal publishers, university administrators, federal funding agencies, and information and data professionals. Our first-year efforts resulted in four main areas of interest: developing a better understanding of the current PID ecosystem; clarifying how and when PIDs could be assigned to scientific instruments and facilities; challenges and barriers involved with assigning PIDs; incentives for researchers, facility managers, and other stakeholders to encourage the use of PIDs. The potential for PIDs to facilitate the discovery, connection, and attribution of research instruments and facilities indicates an obvious value in their use. The lack of standards of how and when they are created, assigned, updated, and used is a major barrier to their widespread use. Data and information professionals can work to create relationships with stakeholders, provide relevant education and outreach activities, and integrate PIDs for instruments and facilities into their data curation and publication workflows. 

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Related Other #1 : Data Citation Guidelines for Earth Science Data , Version 2

Related PhysicalObject #1 : NSF/NCAR Hercules C130 Aircraft

Related PhysicalObject #2 : NCAR Integrated Surface Flux System (ISFS)

Related PhysicalObject #3 : UCT HPC Facility

Related Report #1 : Developing a US National PID Strategy

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Author Mayernik, Matthew
Johnson, A.
Julian, R.
Murray, M.
Mundoma, C.
Ranganath, A.
Stossmeister, Gregory J.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2024-12-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-10T19:56:51.891760
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:42254
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Mayernik, Matthew, Johnson, A., Julian, R., Murray, M., Mundoma, C., Ranganath, A., Stossmeister, Gregory J.. (2024). Persistent identifiers for instruments and facilities: Current state, challenges, and opportunities. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7dz0dk3. Accessed 02 August 2025.

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