Abstract
The uptake of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) has increased in recent years and has improved the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR) of various research related objects (e.g., data, software, researchers and research organisations). The uptake of PIDs for physical aspects of research (such as samples, artefacts, reagents and analyses instruments) has thus far been embraced primarily for use in the fields of Earth and life Sciences. Wider adoption of PIDs for physical aspects of research can improve the findability and accessibility of these resources, which will allow for data to be put into more detailed context. By using PIDs all the information about a sample or artefact could be more easily available in a single location, allowing for persistent links to other sources of relevant information. Through the use of interoperable (metadata) standards and shared forms of documentation it will be easier to collaborate across multiple disciplines and the reusability of resulting data and the physical samples and artefacts themselves will improve. Wider adoption of PIDs for physical aspects of research is challenging, as research communities will have to work together to establish relevant standards that are meaningful across multiple domains. The infrastructure for wider adoption already exists, it is now up to research communities to adopt standards and PIDs for the physical aspects of their research and up to funding and research institutes to support this broader adoption.
Highlights
Recent years have seen an increased focus on improved research data management in scholarship
Recent years have seen the introduction for Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for multiple research components, e.g., data and software, and the more physical aspects of research such as research activities, research and funding organisations, as well as researchers themselves (Table 1)
Efforts have been undertaken by the Persistent Identification of Instruments (PIDINST) working group members of the Research Data Alliance since 2017, with primarily Earth Science use cases (Stocker et al, 2020)
Summary
Recent years have seen an increased focus on improved research data management in scholarship. Often, naming conventions of physical samples and artefacts are not formalised and as a result, sample names can be ambiguous and heavily reliant on personal preferences, as well as subject to name changes over the course of a sample’s lifecycle This means that it is possible that different samples can be assigned the same name, or that a single sample has multiple names that are difficult to relate to each other which makes it difficult to track samples or resources across studies (Bandrowski et al, 2015; Devaraju et al, 2017; Hsu et al, 2020). Making information and data generated from physical samples more widely available in a standardised manner will facilitate collaboration across different research groups and disciplines, as it will be easier to identify which analyses have already been performed and see where the gaps in knowledge persist
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