Persistent organisation identifiers continue to be a much needed but ‘not-quite-there’ piece of identifier infrastructure. They are required at many stages of the research production to credit institutions for their contributions, including funding, authorship and publishing.
There are multiple identifier providers with differing representations and coverage. Some but not all of these providers link to other identifiers, but all do so in different and proprietary manner making mapping between them difficult. In addition, the identified organisations themselves need to be able to assert information about themselves without needing to manage multiple relationships. This results in a very complex landscape that makes organisation identifiers difficult to utilise to their full potential.
In this session we will discuss how organisation identifiers and their metadata could be represented using LOD by the organisations themselves. We will also consider if LOD can help link the disparate organisation identifier providers so that they can be crosswalked and used interchangeably. If a solution to these problems already exists then we will examine the barriers that have prevented its adoption and how they might be overcome.
Background reading and current work on organisation identifiers can be found through the Organisation Identifier Working Group. The group was formed in early 2017 to refine the structure, principles, and technology specifications for an open, independent, non-profit organization identifier registry to facilitate the disambiguation of researcher affiliations.