Identification

Title

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

Abstract

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. 

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7dz0dk3

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<style type="text/css"></style><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-10T19:56:51.891760

Metadata language

eng; USA