In “Why PID Strategies are Having a Moment – and Why You should Care” Alice Meadows addresses the role of PIDs in scholarly communication and why they are getting more attention. Persistent identifiers for researchers (e.g. ORCID), works (DOIs) and organizations (e.g. ROR) form a network to transfer research metadata between researchers, funders, government agencies, publishers and other institutions in open, community-governed and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) protocols. For all parties involved, adopting PIDs translates to higher accuracy and less time. Meadows quotes a couple of recent studies on the administrative time (and money) wasted on rekeying data. PID-based networks are designed to eliminate that waste.
Policy-makers and funders are paying attention to the benefits of PID-based administrative systems and networks, from the Nelson Memo in the U.S. to Plan S in Europe, and requiring their use. Researchers who adopt and use PIDs spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on actual research. The benefits of PIDs will be fully realized when more people, and systems, employ them.
