PIDapa-party-pooper: PIDs are a dead end; long live open infrastructure

As a community, we have started so many initiatives centered around the need for PIDs, or how PIDs should be connected or governed, that PIDs are presented as ends in themselves. As a co-founder of PIDapalooza, these were important discussions back in 2016. But the message simply has to move on. PIDs are pointless without accompanying metadata, assertions, relationships, and associated services - at a minimum, robust APIs for getting the metadata. By talking exclusively about PIDs, and “minting” PIDs, we have inadvertently imbued the identifier strings themselves with talismanic, magical properties - an elixir that cures all. We need to re-focus our attention and talk about how open scholarly infrastructure enables open research and human knowledge.