RAiD, the ‘Research Activity Identifier, is a unique, persistent identifier (PID) for research projects and activities designed in accordance with the RAiD ISO standard (23527:2022). It is intended to help researchers, research institutions, and even funders solve the key challenge of tracking all activities and outputs associated with a particular research activity or project throughout its entire life cycle. In the context of RAiD, a research activity or project is understood as what researchers do, as opposed to the grants that researchers receive.
The new RAiD DataCite Consortium will help organizations and researchers track their projects and associated research outputs.
In March 2024, DOI registration agency DataCite and RAiD system owner Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) announced a partnership to provide RAiD services. RAiD, represented by ARDC, has now joined DataCite services as one of the consortia. This means that RAiD will use DataCite’s infrastructure to register RAiD.
Each RAiD RA operates an instance of the RAiD service for a particular region or constituency. RAiD RAs will be part of the Consortium and use DataCite services to register DOIs as RAiD identifiers, and submit a core subset of RAiD metadata to DataCite. The full metadata record, tailored to the requirements of research project tracking, is stored in the RAiD service. Individual RAiD services are then federated into the global RAiD system. This architecture will not only yield a robust and scalable global system, but will produce a seamless experience for RAiD users. RAiDs are expressed in the form of https://raid.org/prefix/suffix, resolvable through the RAiD portal operated by the ARDC at https://raid.org/.
How is a RAiD different?
RAiD has been designed from the ground up as a project identifier and global project registry. Through the partnership, RAiD utilizes DataCite DOIs for its identifiers, although RAiD is a separate system. This system has a metadata schema designed specifically for projects, which can also be extended by RAiD Registration Agencies to support particular regions or domains. Beyond an identifier and associated metadata, RAiD offers a service for managing project information. This service facilitates access to RAiDs by multiple authenticated users, so that researchers, research administrators, and other trusted parties can be allowed to edit any given RAiD. RAiD also recognises the dynamic nature of projects, automatically creating a project’s change history and providing tools to interact with it. Finally, RAiD generates and resolves to a standardized landing page.
How to start registering in the RAiD system?
If your organization would like to offer the RAiD identifier, please let the National Center for Persistent Identifiers know at identifikatory@techlib.cz.
More information about the DataCite and RAiD partnership:
DataCite & ARDC Announce Partnership to Deliver the RAiD Service
Get Started With RAiD Registration Through the New RAiD Consortium