The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to Christine Kirkpatrick, Director of Research Data Service at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), part of the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS). Kirkpatrick and the SDSC team will partner with Lyrasis to pilot a new component of the research ecosystem of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reproducible) data services and tools using a system called Research Activity Identifier (RAiD), which was developed by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).

"SDSC will serve as the inaugural registration authority for the U.S. RAiD service, which will provide researchers, funders, institutions and other stakeholders with a way to assign globally unique, persistent identifiers (PIDs) with corresponding metadata for specific projects or portfolios," said Kirkpatrick. "This is especially helpful for long-term discovery, resolution, access, sharing, reporting and impact assessment of the researchers, resources, funding and associated outputs of projects with multiple stakeholders over time." The SDSC-led effort includes developing a hosted cloud service, a web application and an API (application programming interface) for issuing RAiDs — alongside creating a sustainable business model to support the service. View SCSC's announcement about the partnership.

Lyrasis is well-positioned to support the outreach, education and dissemination of access to RAiD services in the U.S. through this pilot initiative. Among the many programs and services that it supports, Lyrasis is the organizational home for two other PID initiatives: the ORCID US Community consortium, providing licensing, resources and support for a robust community of 200+ non-profit organizations in the U.S. that are using ORCID to persistently identify researchers and contributors, as well as a national DataCite consortium for US institutions assigning DOIs (digital object identifiers) to their local research outputs.

"Although RAiD is already in use internationally, U.S. institutions currently lack access — despite growing interest from a range of stakeholders, including universities, research funders and organizations like the Center for Open Science," said Sheila Rabun, Senior Strategist for Research Infrastructure Programs at Lyrasis and partner on the project. "This pilot initiative to integrate RAiD into the U.S. research ecosystem will establish working relationships to enhance efficiency, improve collaboration and ensure the long-term preservation of critical research data."

Kirkpatrick said that RAiDs, which follow international standards, provide a transparent and reliable way to centralize and preserve vital project information — even after a project ends. RAiD addresses the challenges of repetitive manual data entry and alleviates administrative burden for researchers by simplifying tasks such as preparing funding applications, managing project collaborations and generating reports. PIDs are key to implementing some of the FAIR principles, but also to support newer data architectures such as knowledge graphs and to be more precise with context for AI readiness. Several countries have adopted national PID strategies, and the U.S. has a NISO-led interagency working group currently working on a U.S. national PID strategy. "RAiD represents a missing piece needed for a successful PID strategy, giving stakeholders a way to find and collect information about projects — the predominant way science is organized across institutional boundaries and across different funding grants and investigators," said Kirkpatrick.

"One challenge with persistent identifiers has been linking them together to better map research activities and outputs," said Chris Erdmann, who is on the Advisory Group for RAiD, part of SDSC's Data Initiatives and the GO FAIR U.S. Office and Director of Open Science at SciLifeLab. "RAiD makes this easier — helping us track open science indicators and gain a clearer picture of networks and global collaboration."

U.S. organizations interested in learning more about RAiD in the U.S. are encouraged to reach out to Sheila Rabun at sheila.rabun@lyrasis.org for more information. More information about this grant project can be found via NSF Award Number 2434407.