OSCARS webinar: Building a PID Strategy for Research Projects

jeudi 26 nov. 2026, 14:00 → 15:40 Europe/Paris

Online

OSCARS invites you to attend the OSCARS webinar: Building a PID Strategy for Research Projects, to be held online on Thursday, 26 November, from 14:00 to 15:30 CET.

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) are a key component of FAIR and Open Science, but an effective PID strategy requires more than assigning identifiers to research outputs. It involves identifying the relevant research entities, selecting appropriate and community-recognised PID systems, connecting them through rich metadata, and maintaining meaningful relationships throughout the research lifecycle.

This interactive webinar will present the main recommendations from the OSCARS practical guide Build your own PID strategy – A practical introduction for research projects* and complement them with community perspectives and concrete implementation examples. Particular attention will be given to the practical benefits of a coherent PID strategy, minimum implementation priorities, common pitfalls, PID metadata and interoperability, research activity identification, and complementary approaches such as content-based identifiers.

The session will bring together contributors from the OSCARS PID Strategy article and invited experts from the wider PID ecosystem. It is open to researchers, data stewards, research infrastructure staff, technical specialists, project coordinators and anyone interested in implementing persistent identification in research.

A substantial discussion period will allow participants to exchange practical challenges, implementation choices and emerging needs, followed by a short feedback session to inform future training and guidance activities.

Who should attend

• Researchers
• Data stewards
• Research infrastructure staff
• Technical specialists
• Project coordinators
• Anyone interested in implementing persistent identification in research

 

Objectives:

• Introduce the practical recommendations from the OSCARS Build your own PID strategy web article.
• Help projects identify what should be persistently identified and which solutions fit their needs.
• Show why PID implementation also depends on metadata, relationships, governance and community practices.
• Share concrete community and project experiences.
• Collect feedback to improve future OSCARS training and guidance.

 

* David, R., Millar, P., Carboni, N., Dillo, I., Eklund, N., Ewbank, J., Gouzi, F., Guillem, A., Makula, L., Schmidt-Tremmel, F., Thomas, J., & Lamanna, G. (2026). Build your own PID strategy – A practical introduction for research projects. Open Science Clusters' Action for Research & Society (OSCARS). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22751003 

1 Welcome and introduction

OSCARS brings together Europe’s five Science Clusters to support the adoption of FAIR and Open Science practices across research communities. This opening session will briefly introduce the project and explain why a coherent PID strategy helps make research outputs easier to discover and cite, while supporting interoperability and reuse.

It will also outline the webinar’s objectives and programme: sharing practical recommendations and experiences from different communities, and discussing the design of a checklist to help projects develop their own PID strategies. Participants will be encouraged to bring their questions and implementation challenges to the discussion.

Orateur: Romain David (ERINHA)

2 Building a PID strategy: from principles to practice

• Introduction to the OSCARS practical guide
• A minimum viable PID strategy: what every project should consider
• Choosing community-recognised PID solutions
• Connecting PIDs and avoiding common implementation pitfalls

Orateurs: Romain David (ERINHA), Dr Rorie Edmond (RAID Organisation (to be confirmed))

3 PIDs, metadata and interoperability in Zenodo

This session will explore how Zenodo uses persistent identifiers and rich metadata to support the discovery, citation and reuse of research outputs. It will highlight how PIDs can connect research outputs with researchers, organisations and projects, contributing to a more interoperable research ecosystem.

The presentation will also discuss metadata practices, interoperability challenges and the role of repositories in building a connected PID ecosystem.

Zenodo website: https://zenodo.org/

Key points:
- Why metadata matters as much as the identifier
- From individual PIDs to a connected PID Graph connecting projects, people, organisations and research outputs
- Community practices and interoperability

Orateur: M. Giovanni Guerrieri (CERN)

4 PIDs in Astronomy: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

With several decades of experience in persistent identification, astrophysics offers valuable lessons for research communities where these practices are more recent. PID systems form an essential backbone for sharing and connecting information across its data-intensive ecosystem. This presentation will examine both the strengths of these established practices and the problems that persist today, highlighting the challenges of maintaining reliable identifiers and interoperable links as data volumes, services and scientific needs evolve.

Orateur: Dr Baptiste Cecconi (Laboratoire d’Instrumentation et de Recherche en Astrophysique (LIRA))

5 A community use case: beyond conventional identification [BIO-CODES project]

This session will introduce BIO-CODES, an OSCARS-funded project exploring the use of content-based identifiers to enhance the AI-readiness of bioimaging data.

Unlike conventional PID systems, content-based identifiers are derived from the data itself, offering complementary approaches to data identification, traceability and integrity. The presentation will discuss how these approaches can work alongside established PID solutions, their potential benefits for provenance and reproducibility, and the opportunities and challenges they raise in data-intensive research environments.

Project: BIO-CODES – Enhancing AI-Readiness of Bioimaging Data with Content-Based Identifiers
https://oscars-project.eu/projects/bio-codes-enhancing-ai-readiness-bioimaging-data-content-based-identifiers
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvia-le-d%C3%A9v%C3%A9dec-a4b743a/

Key points:
- Content-based identifiers for bioimaging data
- Complementarity with established PID approaches
- Provenance, integrity and AI-readiness

Orateur: Dr Sylvia E. Le Dévédec (Leiden University, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research)

6 Open discussion and Q&A

Participants are invited to share their questions, experiences and practical challenges in selecting and implementing PID solutions. The discussion will explore metadata requirements, long-term sustainability and interoperability, drawing on the needs and perspectives of different research projects and communities.

A central aim will be to identify and prioritise the key elements of a PID strategy checklist that projects can readily adopt and adapt to their own context. Participants’ contributions will help clarify common requirements, discuss choices that depend on the research context, and identify where further practical guidance is needed.

Key points:

• Challenges encountered by research projects
• Selecting and implementing appropriate PID solutions
• Metadata, sustainability and interoperability challenges
• Questions and experiences from the community
• Key elements to prioritise for an adaptable and adoptable PID strategy checklist

Orateur: Dr Paul Millar (moderator) (DESY)

7 Wrap up, session feedback and closing

• Was the webinar useful for your project?
• Was the balance between presentations and time for discussions right? If not, in which direction should it be changed, presentation or discussion?
• What should be improved?
• Which topics need further guidance or training?
• Suggested follow-up activities

Orateur: Romain David (ERINHA)