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About PIDs at DOE OSTI


A persistent identifier (PID) is a digital identifier that is globally unique, persistent, machine resolvable, has an associated metadata schema, identifies an entity (e.g. a person/researcher, publication, award, organization, or research output), and is frequently used to disambiguate between entities. PIDs are long-lasting, managed, and registered unique digital reference (often in the form of a URL) to an object (e.g., person, organization, research output, award) that can be represented or described online. The identifier is a string of numbers, letters, and/or symbols assigned to the digital object.

The Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) offers services and support for assigning and using PIDs. Assignment of PIDs to research components allows DOE to better track research awards and outputs, disambiguate research investigators and authors, and link components throughout the research lifecycle. PID assignment also aids in discovery of DOE-funded research, providing more exposure to the research DOE funds and potentially increasing the pace of scientific discovery.

Persistent Identifier Organization Memberships

Through membership to several PID organizations (including Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID), OSTI is able to provide a number of PID services to DOE and federal agencies.

Crossref

  • OSTI became a member of Crossref in 2005 to assign DOIs to DOE-funded technical reports and eventually to other text-based documents.
  • Crossref is a not-for-profit membership organization that works to make research outputs easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse.
  • Crossref provides DOI services as a registration agency of the DOI Foundation.
  • OSTI uses Crossref DOI services to assign DOIs to text-based documents such as technical reports, conference presentations, and conference posters.
  • OSTI uses the Crossref Grant ID Service to assign DOIs to DOE awards through the Award DOI Service.
  • OSTI also maintains the DOE funding office hierarchy used by the Crossref Open Funder Registry, which assigns DOIs to funding organizations.

Data Cite

  • OSTI became a member of DataCite in 2010 to facilitate citing, accessing, and reusing publicly available research data produced by DOE-funded researchers.
  • DataCite is an international not-for-profit organization that supports data visibility, ease of data citation in scholarly publications, data preservation and future reuse, and data access and retrievability.
  • DataCite provides DOI services as a registration agency of the DOI Foundation.
  • OSTI uses DataCite DOI services to assign DOIs to data objects, software, and other research outputs through the DOE Data ID Service, Interagency DOI Service, and DOE CODE.

ORCID

  • OSTI became a member of ORCID in 2013 to facilitate collection of ORCID iDs associated with authors in the OSTI R&D submission system, E-Link.
  • ORCID is a not-for-profit organization enabling transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and affiliations by providing a PID (ORCID iDs) for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.
  • In 2016, OSTI integrated with the ORCID API to allow researchers to claim their records in OSTI.GOV and add them to their ORCID record.
  • OSTI established the US Government ORCID Consortium in 2020 for US government organizations who would like to use, collect, and integrate ORCID iDs into their research workflows.

About DOE OSTI

OSTI, a unit of the Office of Science, fulfills agency-wide responsibilities to collect, preserve, and disseminate both unclassified and classified scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE-funded research and development (R&D) activities at DOE national laboratories and facilities and at universities and other institutions nationwide. OSTI provides access to DOE STI through a suite of web-based, searchable discovery tools and through other commonly used search engines, offering ever-expanding sources of R&D information to DOE, the research community, and the science-attentive public.