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Identifier services at CDL: Connecting our communities

Last week, more than 1100 people registered to attend PIDapalooza21, a 24-hour-long virtual event celebrating persistent identifiers and the communities that use them. Held online for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PIDapalooza21 was able to attract a much larger audience than any of the four previous PIDapaloozas. But even by virtual event standards, 1100 people is still a lot! Does this mean that persistent identifiers are now mainstream? And if so, what does this mean for the identifier services and initiatives that we lead at California Digital Library?

Background: Identifiers at CDL

The identifiers portfolio at CDL encompasses technical infrastructure, such as the EZID service, and cross-organization collaborations, such as CDL’s leadership role in the Research Organization Registry (ROR) as well as PIDapalooza. In the spirit of CDL’s broader mission and vision, the identifiers portfolio aims to enable the discoverability, citability, and long-term stewardship of UC data, research outputs, publications, special collections, and archives. We do this by supporting identifier use and adoption across the UC campuses, enriching CDL’s core infrastructure for publishing, data management, and preservation, and contributing to global identifier initiatives that can help to further amplify UC scholarship.

Identifiers in open research infrastructure

While persistent identifiers themselves are associated with fixity and stability, the landscape in which they are situated is constantly shifting. Research infrastructure is becoming more complex and more connected. Institutions, publishers, funders, and policymakers are under more pressure to track and quantify research activities. Infrastructure providers face growing costs and competition.

Identifiers can help us navigate this landscape and address these challenges. But persistent identifiers alone are not the solution.

A DOI string for a dataset doesn’t tell us anything about what data is captured, or who created it, where that researcher is affiliated, or which funders supported the research project. But if the metadata registered with the DOI includes these details, the identifier becomes meaningful and powerful.

While more people are paying attention to identifiers these days—as evidenced by the record attendance at PIDapalooza—there is still a need to drive home the point that the identifiers themselves are not the goal; it’s about what the identifiers can do. In order to fulfill the true promise of identifiers, we need to be able to connect them through open data, open metadata, and open infrastructure. And we need communities to understand how to do this and why it is important.

What does this mean for EZID?

A year ago, we reflected on EZID’s evolution as the service has pivoted from its original foundations to pursue a new vision for the future of identifier services at CDL. In the past year, work on EZID has been focused on modernizing and strengthening its core infrastructure so that we can achieve this vision. Some highlights include:

As 2021 gets underway, work on EZID and across the identifiers portfolio in general will involve building on these infrastructure efforts to harness the power of PIDs. Our goals fall into three main areas:

Identifiers are a key aspect of our collective research infrastructure and it is an exciting time to be working on how to best leverage them to connect our communities.

Party with PIDapalooza (virtually) in 2021

PIDapalooza is going online in 2021!

We wish we could all be together in person for the fifth (!) festival of persistent identifiers, but we’re excited to bring the world’s largest—and longest—virtual PID party directly to your desk, your couch, your balcony—really, anywhere there’s a strong WiFi signal.

PIDapalooza logo with event date and image of hand holding phone in silhouette

PIDapalooza 2021 will be a 24-hour nonstop PID party happening around the world. PIDapalooza has never been a regular conference and this one will be no different!

The party starts on January 27 at 14:30 UTC (see the time in your location here). Sessions will take place over the course of the following 24 hours. That’s right: we’re partying all night long and no matter your time zone, you’ll be able to join in.

Propose a session…and visit PIDapalooza.org for more details to about the program, the structure, and how to participate.

In the meantime:

PIDapalooza 2021 is brought to you by the following PID groupies:

California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, NISO (welcome to our newest groupie!), and ORCID

For more information, visit the PIDapalooza website and follow PIDapalooza on Twitter.

PIDapalooza 2020: Highlights from the Fourth Festival of PIDs

Last month, PIDapalooza rocked the world again! The fourth festival of persistent identifiers, which took place in Lisbon, featured a Portuguese classical guitarist, a Japanese nail artist, an interpretive dance about the scientific process, several uses of beach balls, silly hats and bells, the latest version of the fabulous PIDapalooza playlist and, of course, the lighting of the eternal flame!

There it is, the eternal flame of persistence is turned on thanks to its supporters 🔥 #PIDapalooza2020 @ORCID_Org @datacite @CrossrefOrg @CalDigLib pic.twitter.com/1ZnaqbAZYe

— Mohammad Hosseini (@mhmd_hosseini) January 29, 2020

The festival lineup in Lisbon was impressive, with more than 40 different sessions from expert speakers who shared their PID successes and challenges, presented their visions for PID connections and PID communities, and introduced new PIDs on the block, all while discussing these serious topics in a range of interactive and engaging formats.

Not to mention the festival headliners: three inspiring keynote speakers…

First up was Maria Fernanda Rollo, Associate Professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her talk, Towards the Circular Science: PIDs for a New Generation of Knowledge Creation and Management Paradigm in Portugal — from Vision to Reality, focused on her experience as Portugal’s former Secretary of State for Science, Technology, and Higher Education. As the person responsible for developing their national strategy for open science, Maria’s priority was more science, less bureaucracy — not as simple as it sounds! Democratization, efficiency, and transparency were key to the Portuguese PID policy, which included developing Estudante IDs for students and Ciencia IDs for everyone involved in science.

The second keynote, The Science Ecosystem and Open Science: A Multi-Legged Stool, was delivered by Beth Plale, program officer at the US National Science Foundation, working on open science, and a Professor in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering at Indiana University – Bloomington. Like Maria, Beth highlighted both the benefits and the challenges of open science, but her focus was primarily on data. She encouraged us to think about treating different kinds of digital content differently — for example, suggesting that not all data needs to be kept forever. And she noted that although “there’s a [PID] brain trust in this room,” most people don’t understand and/or care about identifiers; there’s a lot of work to be done on that front!

Last, but very definitely not least, was the closing keynote, Kathryn Kaiser, Assistant Professor and Scientist in the Office of Energetics at the University of Alabama – Birmingham. Her talk was entitled Dancing with the Scientists: The Costs of Piddling with Science without PIDs. In a festival-inspired mix of music, animation, and interpretive dance (yes, featuring a unicorn-themed beach ball), not to mention some memorable analogies — cheese as a metaphor for metadata, fishing as a metaphor for systematic reviews — Kathryn shared her pain, her struggles, her data, and her hopes as a researcher doing systematic review work in nutrition and obesity topics and relying on quality data infrastructure.

We are definitely all awake and energized after this fun start to @KatKaiserPhD’s keynote #PIDapalooza2020 😀 pic.twitter.com/SFw6A4nnQh

— PIDapalooza (@pidapalooza) January 30, 2020

#PIDapalooza2020 was the largest-ever gathering in the festival’s four years, with about 175 participants from around the globe, many attending for the first time.

And that’s a wrap! Farewell #PIDapalooza2020 & farewell Lisbon! Thanks to everyone for being such a great crowd – see you again for #PIDapalooza2021 in ….??? (But not Wyoming. Sorry Wyoming.) pic.twitter.com/0NIAbaLvCD

— PIDapalooza (@pidapalooza) January 30, 2020

When we asked festival attendees (*in a very scientific poll*) whether we had rocked their world this year, the answer was a resounding “Hell, yeah!”

We also asked you if #PIDapalooza2020 rocked your world. And yeah, hell yeah it did (apart from a handful of grumpy people)! pic.twitter.com/JAdcMu400l

— PIDapalooza (@pidapalooza) January 30, 2020

It is clear from attendee feedback that PIDapalooza is truly a unique event, bringing together a specialized community to discuss important topics in a friendly and inclusive setting. Some highlights from the 2020 festival in their words:

It was an incredibly positive and productive event! I appreciated the ability to connect with the leading experts in the PID community. It is a testament to the meeting that it draws a braintrust like this.

[I liked] That all keynote speakers were women! But also the rather “informal” approach (taking yourself not too seriously while taking the work seriously).

The range of parallel talks means that you can really tailor your conference experience. It can be totally different from the journey your colleagues and friends experience, and you can share what you have learned over delicious canapés in a rainy city!

There’s a wonderful community feel – everyone is interested in sharing, learning, and having conversations during breaks. It’s amazing to have the leading PID folks in one place!

This is the best meeting to attend for the work I do.

It will soon be time to start thinking about the next PIDapalooza — the fifth! We’re already thinking about using that important anniversary as an opportunity to experiment — with the format, the location, or both — as well as continuing to build on all the things people love about the event.

In the meantime, whether or not you were in Lisbon yourself, you can experience or revisit #PIDapalooza2020 on Twitter and through the presentations available on the PIDapalooza 2020 community page on Zenodo.

Post contributed by the PIDapalooza 2020 organizing committee: Ana Afonso (FCT), Helena Cousijn (DataCite), Maria Gould (CDL), Stephanie Harley (ORCID), Ginny Hendricks and Maria Sullivan (Crossref). Special thanks to Alice Meadows (NISO) for editorial support. 

We’re Having a (PID) Party – And You’re Invited!

PIDapalooza 2020 is just around the corner (January 29-30, Lisbon, Portugal) — and it’s going to be fun! We have a great venue, the fabulous Belem Cultural Center, and a great lineup:

You can see the full lineup here, and tickets are now on sale (a bargain at just US$150!). Half of the available places are already filled (as of early December) — so get yours now! 

Whether you’ll be attending PIDapalooza for the first or the fourth time — or if you’ve never attended — we’d also love to hear your thoughts about the event, so please take a few minutes to complete this short survey. We’ll share the results at PIDapalooza 2020, and on our blogs.

Thanks — and see you in January!

Your friendly neighborhood Planning Committee

Ana Afonso (FCT), Helena Cousijn (DataCite), Maria Gould (CDL), Stephanie Harley (ORCID), Ginny Hendricks and Maria Sullivan (Crossref)

We’ll be rocking your world again at PIDapalooza 2020

Logo for PIDapalooza

The official countdown to PIDapalooza 2020 begins here! It’s 162 days to go till our flame-lighting opening ceremony at the fabulous Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, Portugal. Your friendly neighborhood PIDapalooza Planning Committee—Helena Cousijn (DataCite), Maria Gould (CDL), Stephanie Harley (ORCID), Ginny Hendricks (Crossref), and Alice Meadows (ORCID)—are already hard at work making sure it’s the best one so far!

We have a shiny new website, with loads more information than before, including Spotify playlists (please add your PID songs to the 2020 one, an Instagram photo gallery, and of course registration information. Look out for updates there and on Twitter.

And, led by Helena, the Program Committee is starting its search for sessions that meet PIDapalooza’s goals of being PID-focused, fun, informative, and interactive. If you’ve a PID story to share, a PID practice to recommend, or a PID technology to launch, the Committee wants to hear from you. Please send them your ideas, using this form, by September 27. We aim to finalize the program by late October/early November.

Don’t forget to tie your proposal into one of the six festival themes:

Theme 1: Putting Principles into Practice
FAIR, Plan S, the 4 Cs; principles are everywhere. Do you have examples of how PIDs helped you put principles into practice? We’d love to hear your story!

Theme 2: PID Communities
We believe PIDs don’t work without community around them. We would like to hear from you about best practice among PID communities so we can learn from each other and spread the word even further!

Theme 3: PID Success Stories
We already know PIDs are great, but which strategies worked? Share your victories! Which strategies failed? Let’s turn these into success stories together!

Theme 4: Achieving Persistence through Sustainability
Persistence is a key part of PIDs, but there can’t be persistence without sustainability. Do you want to share how you sustain your PIDs or how PIDs help you with sustainability?

Theme 5: Bridging Worlds – Social and Technical
What would make heterogeneous PID systems ‘interoperate’ optimally? Would standardized metadata and APIs across PID types solve many of the problems, and if so, how would that be achieved? And what about the social aspects? How do we bridge the gaps between different stakeholder groups and communities?

Theme 6: PID Party!
You don’t just learn about PIDs through Powerpoints. What about games? Interpretive dance? Get creative and let us know what kind of activity you’d like to organize at PIDapalooza this year!

PIDapalooza: the essentials

What? PIDapalooza 2020 – the open festival of persistent identifiers
When? 29-30 January 2020 (kickoff party the evening of January 28)
Where? Belém Cultural Center, Lisbon, Portugal (map)
Why? To think, talk, live persistent identifiers for two whole days with your fellow PID people, experts, and newcomers alike!

We hope you’re as excited about PIDapalooza 2020 as we are and we look forward to seeing you in Lisbon.

Cross-posted from the Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID blogs

PIDapalooza – What, Why, When, Who?

audience

PIDapalooza, a community-led conference on persistent identifiers
November 9-10, 2016
Radisson Blu Saga Hotel
pidapalooza.org

PIDapalooza will bring together creators and users of persistent identifiers (PIDs) from around the world to shape the future PID landscape through the development of tools and services for the research community. PIDs support proper attribution and credit, promote collaboration and reuse, enable reproducibility of findings, foster faster and more efficient progress, and facilitate effective sharing, dissemination, and linking of scholarly works.

If you’re doing something interesting with persistent identifiers, or you want to, come to PIDapalooza and share your ideas with a crowd of committed innovators.

Conference themes include:

  1. PID myths. Are PIDs better in our minds than in reality? PID stands for Persistent IDentifier, but what does that mean and does such a thing exist?
  2. Achieving persistence. So many factors affect persistence: mission, oversight, funding, succession, redundancy, governance. Is open infrastructure for scholarly communication the key to achieving persistence?
  3. PIDs for emerging uses. Long-term identifiers are no longer just for digital objects. We have use cases for people, organizations, vocabulary terms, and more. What additional use cases are you working on?
  4. Legacy PIDs. There are of thousands of venerable old identifier systems that people want to continue using and bring into the modern data citation ecosystem. How can we manage this effectively?
  5. The I-word. What would make heterogeneous PID systems “interoperate” optimally? Would standardized metadata and APIs across PID types solve many of the problems, and if so, how would that be achieved? What about standardized link/relation types?
  6. PIDagogy. It’s a challenge for those who provide PID services and tools to engage the wider community. How do you teach, learn, persuade, discuss, and improve adoption? What’s it mean to build a pedagogy for PIDs?
  7. PID stories. Which strategies worked? Which strategies failed? Tell us your horror stories! Share your victories!
  8. Kinds of persistence. What are the frontiers of ‘persistence’? We hear lots about fraud prevention with identifiers for scientific reproducibility, but what about data papers promoting PIDs for long-term access to reliably improving objects (software, pre-prints, datasets) or live data feeds?

PIDapalooza is organized by California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID.

We believe that bringing together everyone who’s working with PIDs for two days of discussions, demos, workshops, brainstorming, and updates on the state of the art will catalyze the development of PID community tools and services.

And you can help by getting involved!.

Propose a session

Please send us your session ideas by September 18. We will notify you about your proposals in the first week of October.

Register to attend

Registration is now open — come join the festival with a crowd of like-minded innovators. And please help us spread the word about PIDapalooza in your community!

Stay tuned

Keep updated with the latest news at the PIDapalooza website and on Twitter (@PIDapalooza) in the coming weeks.

See you in November!