Open Persistent Identifiers: The Building Blocks of Sustainable Scholarly Infrastructure

"At a time when research discovery is more necessary than ever, it is also becoming more complicated. The work of tracking and identifying publications and other research outputs is taking place in a context of increased technological complexity, competing motivations and priorities, and constrained resources. As exemplified by the Microsoft case, one of the fundamental challenges and risks in the scholarly infrastructure landscape is the unpredictable availability of the platforms and services we rely upon to perform this work. When these platforms and services go away, what do we have left? Such challenges and risks might be overcome or at least mitigated if and when scholarly infrastructure is built with open components that can persist beyond their packaging. “The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure” (POSI), which were initially outlined in 2015 and are seeing a revival in 2021, provide a set of guidelines for open infrastructure for research and scholarly communications.2 Within this framework, open infrastructure is a strategy for sustainability. Using the POSI principles as a backdrop, we examine one essential ingredient of open infrastructure: persistent identifiers, or PIDs. We explore ways in which the use of openly available PIDs, and investments in the services that support them, can enable the discovery of research outputs while promoting the sustainability of data and information. Research libraries have an opportunity to adopt a “PID-centric” approach to tracking, sharing, and publishing research. PIDs have the potential to address pain points, increase efficiencies, and save time. Promoting the implementation of open PIDs and the metadata associated with them serves a broader goal of improving information connectivity...."