‘Why Publishers Should Care About Persistent Identifiers’ | Jeff Pooley

"But there are reasons, too, to be cautious about a “PID-optimized world,” to borrow their phrase. One is that an ID-for-everything system promises to feed the quantified research-assessment culture—the one that’s ruined UK higher ed and, in its worldwide overspread, is complicit in the re-casting of the university as an economic engine. The other, related issue is that all this interlinked data will make it easier for the big publishers to create prediction products, only to sell back to universities and research-assessment offices at steep premiums. We are, in a PID-optimized world, shoveling coal into the furnace of surveillance publishing. ..."