Library Support Services for RDI

Persistent identifiers

A persistent identifier (PID) is an identifier used in the online environment to identify a thing, for example, a publication, research dataset or person. The persistent identifier ensures that a link works even when the physical online location of an object has changed.

• Persistent identifiers (e.g. URN, DOI, ORCID) are important metadata.
• The use of identifiers secures the durability of citations and avoids broken links.
• Commonly used persistent identifiers for publications include
  • Handle identifiers used e.g. in open publication repositories
  • DOI identifiers used in the systems of commercial publishers
  • URN identifiers used in the digital collections and publication repositories of national libraries, e.g. Theseus. This means that all Metropolia publications and theses stored in Theseus are assigned a persistent identifier.
• Common persistent identifiers for metadata and datasets include e.g. URN (Etsin, FSD, Language Bank) and DOI (Zenodo)

When a publication is self-archived in Theseus, it is assigned a persistent identifier.

ORCID researcher identifier

ORCID iD is a digital identifier identifying a researcher. The use of the ORCID iD is recommended for the following reasons:

• It separates you from other researchers even when someone has the same name as you, your name changes or your name is written differently in different contexts.
• It allows you to maintain a publication list in the ORCID service.
• ORCID enables the automatic transfer of publication data from one system to another.
• Some publishers require the use of ORCID identifiers.
• The identifier can be used e.g. in publications, manuscripts, blogs, email signatures, social media and funding applications.

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