About PID4NFDI

Persistent Identifier Services for the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)

PID4NFDI is a basic service for persistent identifiers in development for the German National Research Data Infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur – NFDI). PID4NFDI is part of Base4NFDI and is currently in its integration phase, the second of three service development phases.

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are central to FAIR research data management. However, different disciplines and different resources result in diverse requirements and the different NFDI consortia have different levels of maturity in PID implementation. PID4NFDI will design a work programme to build an NFDI foundation service on established PID infrastructures.

As there already is a mature and globally used PID provider landscape and PID needs are highly individual in the consortia, we define our intended service as a set of several components (technical, organisational, standards, training, outreach) that are in their interaction tailored to the needs of NFDI stakeholders.

What are the goals, projects and services of PID4NFDI?

PID4NFDI aims to enhance PID integration within NFDI consortia, considering varying provider maturity levels and community adaptation. Our goal is to boost PID impact by improving metadata quality and interoperability through technical, organisational, and strategic measures. Governance guidelines, outreach efforts, and a modular training concept will promote PID awareness and adoption across disciplines, prototyped collaboratively with consortia partners to ensure broad applicability within NFDI. The interoperability, metadata, governance, training/support, and community engagement components will together form the PID Coordination Hub, which will be a central entry point for users of the PID4NFDI service portfolio.

To enable repository managers to optimize the integration of PIDs into their workflows,
To support trainers in the FDM field with materials and information,
To demonstrate to researchers, decision-makers, and funders the added value of PIDs for their own workflows and processes,
To provide best practices for different use cases to NFDI multipliers like sections and working groups.

PID4NFDI is organized internally by different work packages that cover these measures and areas of engagement. We operate as part of Base4NFDI, a joint initiative of all 26 consortia within NFDI to foster and establish reliable NFDI-wide basic services, and are one of several basic services in development.

The organizations responsible for operating PID4NFDI are DataCite, the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG), the Helmholtz Open Science Office and the TIB – German National Library of Science and Technology.

In which development phase is PID4NFDI?

Initialisation Phase

first phase (12 months)

January 2024 – December 2024 completed

Funding proposal: Persistent Identifier Services for the German National Research Data Infrastructure: Proposal for the Initialisation Phase of Base4NFDI

Retrospective blog post: PID4NFDI’s first year, PID support resources, and what’s to come next

Deliverables: D1.1 Landscape of PID Practices within NFDI Services (Survey Report, Survey Question Catalog) | D1.2 + D2.1 Requirement Analysis of Selected Use Cases and Mapping to PID Providers (NFDI4Microbiota – StrainInfo, FAIRagro – GBIS Repository, KonsortSWD – PID Service, Text+ – SUB Göttingen) | D2.2 Catalog of Metadata Standards Relevant to NFDI (Metadata Catalog, Background Information) | D2.3 + D2.4 Concepts for Metadata Interoperability, Harmonization and Technical Integration of PID Infrastructure | D3.1 Cookbook for Getting Started with PIDs | D3.2 Training Concept | D4.1 Overview of PID Providers and Types (Overview, Background Information) | D4.2 Concept for Sustainable PID Registration Workflows | D5.1 Communication Strategy | D5.2 Project Website | D5.3 Stakeholder Workshop (Report)

Integration Phase

second phase (24 months)

January 2025 – Present current

Funding proposal: Persistent Identifier Services for the German National Research Data Infrastructure: Proposal for the Integration Phase of Base4NFDI

Collaboration with PID Network Germany

PID4NFDI closely collaborates with the project PID Network Germany, which aims to establish a network in science and culture that promotes and consolidates the application, implementation, standardization and international connectivity of PID systems on a national and international level. Both projects have an overlap in partners (DataCite, Helmholtz Open Science Office and TIB – German National Library of Science and Technology) and are hence aligned through bilateral coordination and a well-established exchange of information, which is important due to the different scopes of the projects: PID4NFDI focuses on PID implementation in the context of NFDI and especially within NFDI consortia with analyses of specific use cases. PID Network Germany addresses the wider scientific and cultural sector, covering a more extensive range of PID application areas beyond research data (management) and with a focus on a wide variety of use cases and stakeholders. PID4NFDI can use and integrate results and findings from PID Network Germany, and vice versa: For example, PID4NFDI will adapt the national PID roadmap to be released by PID Network Germany in developing PID guidelines for NFDI, while in turn PID4NFDI contributes PID-related NFDI activities and perspectives to PID Network Germany.