A mob of kangaroos: ARDC's National PIDs strategy to support identifying, linking and citing Australian research
Creators: name: Burton, Adrian
name: Simons, Natasha
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: persistent identifiers
research data

description: Have you ever seen a Kangaroo hop? They rarely go in a straight line, bouncing wildly this way and that. When they all get together, they’re called a mob. They’re a pretty big mob too with boomers (they’re the guys), jills (they’re the girls) with pockets big enough for joeys (babies) and occasionally, missing car keys. Similar to a mob of kangaroos, Australian research institutions are all different shapes and sizes, have different strategies and directions, and different sized funding pockets. What brings us together though is a desire to support Australian research quality, use and impact. The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), through our connected research (PIDs) strategy, are supporting and enabling Australian research institutions to do just that.<br> <br> A research data “commons” has at its foundation some “common” approaches to information and knowledge management. ARDC collaborates with other Australian research agencies to establish underpinning national information infrastructure that improves the identification, discovery, linking and citation of research data, software and related materials. This national infrastructure supports standard definitions, reference values, and identifiers for these common entities and links them to key elements of the research universe such as grants, projects, researchers, and organisations. Shared scientific terminology is a further level of connectedness aspired to in a data commons.<br> <br> PIDs are a core component of this national (and global) infrastructure, enabling research concepts, outputs and objects to be joined up, creating a richer more coherent and connected experience. Without these sophisticated and common approaches to information and knowledge, Australian research will not be part of or benefit from the emerging global research information networks. At national and global scale, cottage industry references to crucial elements of the research enterprise will not suffice. PIDs provide industrial-level standard referencing and identification which are the building blocks of joined-up global research information systems.<br> <br> The ARDC provides, supports and connects with several persistent identifier services including DOI, IGSN, Handle, ORCID and PURL in addition to being the originator and home of a new PID on the block, the Research Activity Identifier (RAID). As part of the national research infrastructure we facilitate access to such services for Australian research institutions. In addition, we actively promote the use of PIDs to connect research coherently through a program of PIDagogy, outreach and community engagement.<br> <br> New drivers in the research environment and internal to our organisation have inspired us to re-evaluate our PID services. We are asking ourselves critical questions such as: Why would researchers and research organisations need PIDs? What problems do they actually solve for them? Are the PID services we are supporting the ones we should continue to support? Who uses these, who needs to use these, how well are they being used, valued? What makes a good PID system? What are the PID properties required to ensure sustainability? What are good financial models for PID services? How can we better articulate the value of PIDs in workflows? How do we improve community buy in from our mob of kangaroos?<br> <br> While we are asking ourselves these questions, we recognise that others are also asking these questions because PIDs are global in nature. Therefore, the ARDC sponsored a three part global PID series to look in more detail at some of these questions. The workshops were held in Singapore, the UK and the USA in collaboration with ORCID, FREYA, Jisc and California Digital Library. Input from these workshops has helped to shape our revised connect research strategy and we trust this is of interest to the mob at PIDapalooza.<br> <br> <em>How would you run the session to support the spirit of PIDapalooza as a laid-back, welcoming, energetic and exciting meeting, and ensure at least 10 minutes of your session are used to interact with the audience?</em><br> <br> We’ll start with some questions and fun facts about kangaroos and get the audience to buy into the analogy with the Australian connect research (PIDs) environment. We may possibly wear kangaroos masks or tails or...