The importance of persistent identifiers in the Age of AI

Modern search engines are trawling the internet and compiling responses as AI overviews, on topics ranging from cancer treatments to CRISPR technology – and not showing where this information has come from in the first place. In such an information landscape it’s critical to be able to clearly show the history and origin of research knowledge – which is where persistent identifiers (PIDs) come in.   

PIDs are essential to modern research as they are a means to guarantee provenance, discoverability, and traceability of scientific results. They allow for the unambiguous identification of researchers, journal articles, datasets, software, tools, samples and organisations. 

It’s a means of tracing trusted information and safeguarding it against inaccuracy and intellectual property threats. 

What is a persistent identifier? 

PIDs are globally unique alphanumeric codes, which provide a long-lasting reference to a scholarly entity such as a researcher or object such as a dataset. They are linked to registries containing information and enable reliable connections that provide clear provenance and attribution in line with data principles such as FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and CARE (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics).   

PIDs can identify the scholarly entity and/or retrieve a description, and they allow for their unambiguous identification, regardless of where it is located on the internet.  

Heath Marks, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Access Federation (AAF) and Board Member of ORCID states “PIDs are crucial in an era where AI based search responses are scraping content from across the internet without any recognition of the origin of information. 

“To maintain trust in scientific research it is critical that the provenance of knowledge is easily identifiable.” 

ORCID: A global approach supporting researchers 

One such PID is the Open Contributor and Research Identifier, ORCID iD.  

ORCID is a global, not-for-profit organisation launched in October 2012, which connects those who participate in research, scholarship and innovation to their contributions and affiliations globally. 

An ORCID iD is a free PID for researchers to use as they engage in research, scholarship and innovation activities. ORCID enables researchers to spend more time conducting research and less time managing it, by enhancing discoverability of research outputs and automating updates to individual records.   

Heath Marks says “ORCID iDs are a trusted source of information, disambiguating researchers and documenting their professional achievements. Researchers have full control of their ORCID record and can decide who has access to view or add information to their ORCID record.” 

In 2023, 9.2 million ORCID records were active globally, and 2.3 billion items of data in ORCID records were reused by external systems.  

Australian ORCID Consortium 

The AAF leads the Australian ORCID Consortium, a national approach to ORCID adoption and integration. The Australian ORCID Consortium was established in 2016 and has 44 members and over 217,000 ORCID iDs connected by member integrations. Among the members of the Australian ORCID Consortium are most Australian universities, CSIRO, Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), ANSTO and Queensland Health.  

Establishing a transparent, verifiable and trusted research ecosystem 

In 2022, the AAF and ARDC commissioned an analysis into the adoption of PIDs by the Australian research sector. The report outlined how implementing PIDs can benefit researchers and research organisations by saving time and money through metadata reuse, including reductions in time, cost and effort. The report found manual rekeying of metadata within the Australian research sector costs $24 million per year, and that the total time spent is 38,000 days per year.  

This report was the precursor to activities within the Australian research and innovation ecosystem to strengthen transparency and integrity by using PIDs. The ARDC are now leading the development of the Australian National PID Strategy and Roadmap and are supported by the AAF as the Australian ORCID Consortium Lead, to see how PIDs can further support the Australian research community.  

ORCID iDs and other PIDs like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), Research Organisation Registries (ROR IDs), and International Generic Sample Number (IGSNs) help to link entities across the research and innovation ecosystem and enhance research transparency, integrity and reproducibility.  

As systems evolve and AI technologies change, PIDs provide a reliable means of linking and referencing resources over time. Adoption of them will strengthen the research and innovation ecosystem and ensure information is transparent, verifiable and trusted. 

Learn more:  

• https://aaf.edu.au/orcid/ 
• Learn how Professor Joe Shapter saved over 3-4 days per grant application thanks to having an ORCID ID. 
• National PIDS Strategy and Roadmap 

AAF has partnered with Microscopy Australia exploring impact tracking through persistent identifiers (PIDs).

Microscopy Australia are a consortium of university-based microscopy facilities that more than 3,500 researchers across Australia use each year. They aim to empower Australian science and innovation by making advanced microscopes accessible to all researchers.

One of the greatest challenges in research is to connect and report on distributed services and this incubator explores how richer reporting, impact tracking and usage data can be provided through ORCID iDs and PIDs across national research infrastructure.