Paul Vierkant
Since 2020, Paul has served as DataCite’s outreach manager. In addition to his work in communications, he engages with the PID Network Germany project. Before joining DataCite, Paul was employed at the Helmholtz Open Science Office and various universities, where he contributed to the development of publication and data repositories. Paul holds an M.A. in North American Studies, Italian, and ethnology. As a committed advocate for Open Research, Paul aims to promote the concept of openness in scholarly communication.
Sessions
What are your favorite graphics or images demonstrating the value of PIDs? Have you created or found one that you love, or do you wish you knew how to create or find one? Let’s get together and share our favorite PID visuals, try generating some with AI tools or with pens and our own brain power, and explore what the ideal PID image would be. Does it communicate through metaphor, as in pictures of interconnected roads, plumbing, or natural waterways? Is it a network visualization generated from real data? Does it chart figures such as potential savings or increase in usage over time? Is it a PowerPoint slide with organizational logos on it connected by lines? In this workshop, you'll imagine, create, and share images that convey why persistent identifiers are so important, creating a public image library that everyone in the PID community can use.
Do you sometimes feel like PID adoption should be easier than it actually is? You are not alone. In this session you will hear a first-hand account of what it really takes to embed persistent identifiers across a large, heterogeneous research infrastructure – Germany's National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), spanning dozens of institutions and disciplines.
PIDs are widely recognised as a key enabler for FAIR RDM. But between that recognition and actual adoption lies a significant implementation gap: administrative hurdles, domain-specific vocabularies, fragmented technical systems, and a mismatch between emerging topic hype and foundational groundwork. Not all efforts succeed, and not all stakeholders are receptive – though occasionally an intervention makes an unexpected difference.
After this session, you will recognise the most common barriers to PID adoption in complex multi-stakeholder environments, have a realistic picture of implementation timelines, and understand why frustration tolerance is a genuine project competency.