Open Science governance: the role of persistent identifiers and metadata standards

Abstract:  While Open Science emphasises openness and reproducibility, governance documentation does not necessarily incorporate these features. It raises concerns, especially compared to government policy mandates emphasising transparency and accountability. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) play a crucial role in enabling the discoverability, accessibility, and traceability of scholarly outputs. However, PIDs see widespread adoption among individual practitioners but slower adoption within institutional and regulatory bodies. This discrepancy leads to uneven metadata usage and highlights the need for a more unified approach to PIDs across the scholarly ecosystem. This essay analyses 46 Open Science governance documents to pinpoint essential areas for improvement. The inconsistencies across documents, the absence of digital object identifiers (DOIs), and varied recognition ability by bibliographic managers underscore the urgent need for standardisation. Embracing Open Science offers a promising avenue to unify stakeholders in a collective push towards bolstering the integrity and efficiency of research, thereby ensuring more robust governance.