PID strategies are being written around the world right now, and the decisions being made will shape the scholarly record for decades. After 25 years running open scholarly infrastructure—now on behalf of 25,000 members in 167 countries—Crossref has an informed perspective on what those decisions should ideally rest on. Today we’re setting it out in our’s first position paper: Persistent identifiers in research infrastructure policy: the need for a holistic approach. You can read it online or download the PDF; it’s a 16-minute read.
Research is rarely limited to a single contributor performing a single role. Behind every research output are people contributing in various ways: software development, data analyses, methodology design, and much more. Often, the same person contributes in several of these ways. Until now, Crossref metadata could only capture part of that picture, but this is changing with Schema 5.5.
Through user experience research (UXR) initiatives that take into account our diverse membership and community, we can have a continuous, deeper understanding of the role of metadata in our members’ workflows, and ensure that our work continues to meet our community’s needs. Your support is the key to this process, and will positively impact the wider community - and if you’d like to start today, you can take part in our latest initiative: help us improve our Events page by sharing your thoughts on the page’s feedback form.
Our 2026 Community Update took place on 13 May. Two calls, one for the eastern and one for the western time zone, highlighted how our global community is growing, how we’re refining the metadata that supports trust in the scholarly record, and connecting records more effectively through our latest tools.
Guide for funders to support FAIR workflows & enable research tracking
Published in August 2023 as part of the Implementing FAIR Workflows project, this Guide is a joint publication by three open scholarly infrastructure organisations—Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID. It introduces the role of persistent identifiers (PIDs) and open metadata in facilitating open and FAIR research, and walks funders through concrete ways to engage: committing resources, enacting congruent policies, and providing support around grant application, management, and reporting.
Strategists
Understand why funder participation in the PID and metadata infrastructure matters.
Persistent identifiers and open metadata are what connect grants to the research outputs, people, and organisations they support—enabling assessment, discovery, and long-term stewardship of the record.
Decision-makers
See what policy and resourcing decisions align a funder with the wider ecosystem.
The Guide sets out recommendations funders can adopt—from PID and metadata requirements in grant conditions, to committing to the community-owned infrastructure that maintains those records.
Practitioners
Apply the recommendations across grant application, management, and reporting.
Concrete workflow guidance for embedding Crossref grant IDs, DataCite dataset/software IDs, and ORCID researcher IDs across the funder’s own systems and reporting pipelines.
What this guide covers
Why PIDs and metadata matter for funders—from grant lifecycle tracking to open-science impact assessment
The three infrastructure organisations’ complementary roles—Crossref for scholarly works and grant records, DataCite for data and software, ORCID for researchers and contributors
Policy recommendations funders can adopt to align with the wider open scholarly ecosystem
Practical workflow steps for grant application, management, and reporting
Community investment—how funders can support the community-owned infrastructure that makes end-to-end research tracking possible
About the Implementing FAIR Workflows project
Implementing FAIR Workflows is a three-year project delivering exemplar FAIR workflows in cognitive neuroscience research, built on the existing PID and metadata infrastructure. This Guide is one of the project’s community-facing outputs, developed by the DataCite project team in collaboration with Crossref and ORCID.
