Guiding principles for implementing persistent identification and metadata features on research tools to boost interoperability of research data and support sample management workflows

In recent years, PIDs have evolved quickly from being an interesting but peripheral resource on the fringes of research data management and scholarly communication to being viewed as a core enabling resource for FAIRification of data.  There are an increasing number of PIDs, and existing PIDs are being developed and used more widely. However, PID infrastructure is still immature, incomplete, dispersed, and largely siloed. The critical issue of how PIDs can be incorporated into research tools, and into research workflows, has been largely ignored.

This project was instituted in order to examine in detail how to incorporate PIDs into research tools, using IGSN DOIS provided by DataCite, and the RSpace digital research platform, as a case study.  The core contributors were DataCite and Research Space, which develops and provides RSpace.  Also instrumental in the project work were two research institutions that provided requirements, Rothamsted Research and UiT the Arctic University of Norway, and two tools providers, the Dataverse repository and the new Fieldmark field notebook, with which RSpace has or has a planned integration. They provided valuable input into the design around data and tool interoperability.

Our approach involved extensive interaction with researchers and research administrators from UiT and Rothamsted to understand their workflows and requirements for the use of IGSNs in the context of RSpace. This was an iterative and collaborative process, described in detail in the full report, that made use of user and design research methods such as write-ups, use cases, user stories, diagrams, and feedback to design and implement a solution that accurately reflected and addressed real-life considerations of integrating PIDs within a research workflow.