Paving the Road to FAIR – Strategies and Considerations to activate PIDs in a large Organization

At the Helmholtz Association, we aim to establish a harmonized data space that connects information across distributed infrastructures. Ideally, this should work within and beyond our organization. Achieving requires standardizing dataset descriptions using suitable metadata. A handy strategy is, to use persistent identifiers (PIDs) and their metadata records to harmonize central parts of the metadata. This will ensure a first level of interoperability and machine actionability even between discipline-unrelated datasets.

While harmonizing PID metadata is a key step, practical implementation depends on a number of factors: 1. Leadership, to support the necessary change processes, 2. A general awareness of roles and responsibilities across the whole research organization, 3. An implementation plan that prioritizes tasks, identifies the right people and interfaces, and specifies the tools and services required to record metadata. 4. An implementation group comprising people with the relevant expertise to implement and communicate the change process, 5. Informational material and training, to onboard the ones who are affected by change, 6. an organization's management supporting the upcoming change, and 7. Funding to be able to overcome the initial obstacles and get everything up and running.

For example, ORCID identifies research contributors. While often associated with publishing scientists, other contributors—such as technicians, data managers, and administrative staff—also play vital roles. Their contributions are often overlooked or not systematically recorded. To change this, PID workflows should begin early, ideally at the hiring stage, to ensure people's roles are captured and linked to datasets.

Similarly, the PIDINST system—developed by an RDA working group—provides unique identifiers for scientific instruments. It includes a simple schema for recording key metadata about instruments, enabling the reliable identification of measurements made with specific devices. Here, workflows should begin with instrument acquisition and include responsibilities for updating metadata, typically assigned to technicians.

In this presentation, we propose tailored PID workflows involving key stakeholder groups within Helmholtz. We outline strategies for implementing ORCID, ROR, PIDINST, IGDS, DataCite and CrossRef DOIs and assign responsibilities for metadata curation. Our goal is to embed PID usage in day-to-day research processes across all centers of our organization and clarify stakeholder roles, thereby strengthening metadata quality and data interoperability of our metadata.