June 10, 2024
Research Data Alliance – United States is pleased to give its unqualified endorsement1 to the report Developing a US National PID Strategy (https://zenodo.org/records/10811008), released in March 2024. The report outlines the benefits of Persistent IDs, their associated metadata, and the systems that connect them. Its objective is to advance open scholarship goals in the United States and achieve that objective through guidance to US stakeholders on the effective use of PIDs for connecting and tracking research in the context of the research ecosystem.
The RDA-US steering committee lauded the report’s significant relevance for PID adoption in the United States. The report aligns well with the RDA-US organization’s mission to advance open science and scholarship in the US. RDA-US endorsement principles state that a document meets the criteria for endorsement if it is a definitive work on the topic. It was noted that the PID Strategy document is titled “Developing a US National PID Strategy” suggesting an evolving nature that could be considered non-definitive. Still, the committee felt the work was a significant enough entry into a national conversation on PIDs to warrant RDA-US endorsement.
We offer several observations made by the RDA-US committee and community for future improvements to the strategy. RDA-US principles state that its actions are unbiased in societal benefit. As such, we recommend that the principles of CARE and TRUST be reflected in future versions of the report; and further suggest avoidance of any impression of favor towards private sector options. Finally, it was noted that there are multiple solutions for PIDs for research software including DOIs and Software Heritage IDs (SWHIDS).
1RDA-US Endorsement Process: https://rdaus.org/rda-us-endorsement/