What are persistent identifiers (PIDs)?
Persistent identifiers are enduring, unique, and ever lasting references or links to online digital assets such as documents, manuscripts or webpages. These are typically accompanied by descriptive metadata which provide information about the item such as it's title, and the name of the authors and contributors. When scholarly output is published online, either via a publisher or a repository, a persistent identifier is typically assigned to the item to ensure that is is easily accessible and remains in perpetuity. This helps to assist with understanding the provenance of an item, and where it originated from. Examples of PIDs include digital object identifiers, handle identifiers, and permalinks.
Researcher identifiers such as ORCiD work in the same way in that they aim to be persistent and unique to the individual.
