People, places, and things: Persistent identifiers in the scholarly communication landscape

Abstract

Persistent identifiers are a key element in the scholarly communication landscape. However, many scholarly communication librarians may not be familiar with persistent identifiers and what to do with them. I should know—I used to be one of these librarians.

When I worked as a scholarly communication librarian, I knew a few basic things about persistent identifiers. I knew what an ORCID iD was and I could explain to researchers why they should have one. I knew what a DOI was, but I did not know that there are different types of DOIs for different types of things, or that there’s more to a DOI than the identifier itself. But I didn’t know there were other persistent identifiers relevant to scholarly communication, like identifiers for affiliations or funders or grants. And I certainly didn’t know that persistent identifiers can be commercialized and paywalled, just like research outputs.