Increasingly, the research community, including funders, publishers and government, is recognising the
power of connection across the research ecosystem to facilitate efficiency, reuse, reproducibility and
transparency of research. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are critical enablers for identifying and linking related
research objects including grants, organisations, people, projects, datasets and publications.
PID systems:
● Provide social and technical infrastructure to identify and cite a research output over time
● Enable machine readability and exchange
● Collect and make available metadata that can provide further context and connections
● Facilitate the linkage and discovery of research outputs, objects, related people, activities and
things
Join this session to learn about recent developments in PID services and infrastructure with a particular focus
on ORCID (people and organisations), RAID (research activities and projects), IGSN (physical samples and
specimens) and DOI (datasets, grey literature), including an update on the NZ DOI consortium.
The session will kick off with brief lightning talks presented by those working to develop PID services and
infrastructure. Following facilitated Q&A participants will be encouraged to contribute to an open discussion
to share experiences, explore ideas and ask questions.
Participants will leave the BoF with a fresh perspective on the opportunities PIDs can offer researchers and
research organisations. We envisage that many participants will be prompted to explore in greater depth
ideas raised during the session as they might apply to their organisation.
The BoF will also offer participants the opportunity to establish or strengthen connections with the broader
PID community in New Zealand, Australia and internationally.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Natasha Simons @n_simons is Associate Director, Skilled Workforce, with the Australian Research Data
Commons (formerly ANDS, RDS and Nectar). With a background in libraries, IT and eResearch, Natasha has
a history of developing policy, technical infrastructure and skills to support research and researchers. She is a
self-professed “PIDs nerd” and contributes to a variety of national and international PID initiatives and
discussions.
Jeff Kennedy, @elbanoitca, is an enterprise architect who has worked extensively in identity management,
integration architecture, information management, and solutions architecture, and has contributed to national
digital-identity initiatives in education, research, science, and innovation.
Jill Mellanby’s current role is that of coordinator for the New Zealand ORCID consortium. A substantial part of
this involves assisting consortium member organisations to get the best value for their organisation out of the
New Zealand ORCID Hub – a web application that allows organisations to request permission to access
individuals’ ORCID records and then act on those permissions to read from and write to those records. Jill’s
previous roles were in CRI libraries before turning to ‘the other side’ and working in academic publishing.
Anton Angelo Research Data Coordinator at the University of Canterbury. Responsible for raising the
amount of research data being preserved and published by Canterbury academics, Anton is also involved in
the Software, Data, and Library Carpentry programs. He has worked in NZ universities for the last 12 years,
and previously for UK internet startups in business development, project management and training. He has
also recently got back into Dungeons and Dragons.
Yvette Wharton is the eResearch Solutions Lead in the Centre for eResearch at the University of Auckland,
working on the research data management service and researcher enablement projects. She has extensive
experience in University teaching, research and IT environments and is passionate about using her broad
knowledge to facilitate people to achieve their aspirations.
Steve Knight is Programme Director Preservation Research & Consultancy (PRC) with the National Library of
New Zealand. The PRC team’s primary focus is preservation of and access to New Zealand digital content
with a particular view to modelling and developing solutions that can be scaled to national level. The primary
vehicle for this is the National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) which includes co-development of the Rosetta
digital preservation system, one of only two commercially available digital preservation systems. The National
Library is currently working through its role, if it has one, in the long-term safekeeping of research data, with a
view to developing a national approach to digital preservation. The recent work on creating a national
consortium for delivering DOIs within New Zealand is part of these considerations.
Laura Armstrong is a Senior eResearch Engagement Specialist in the Centre for eResearch at the University
of Auckland, with experience of designing and delivering research data management services. With a strong
focus on making connections across the research ecosystem, her current work revolves around partnering
with researchers and other research support staff to enable researcher success.