PIDfest 26

Put A PID On It: PID Advocacy for Repositories
2026-10-29 , LUMC05

PIDs are increasingly important for repository workflows. Primary challenges for PID integration into open-source repository platforms include the ability to coordinate many moving pieces globally and identifying who might be responsible for moving any given development forward. In this session, you will learn how PIDs can be used in repository platforms, and a case study example for how PID advocacy work is moving forward for DSpace, an open source, community-driven repository software used by thousands of organizations across the globe.


Do you use or support repositories and are interested in better persistent identifier (PID) integrations into those workflows? In this session, you will learn why PIDs are becoming essential for repository infrastructure, the role of community advocacy, and how stronger integrations can improve discovery, attribution, and connections across research systems. Using DSpace as a case study, you will hear how recent improvements to ORCID integration (supported by the ORCID Global Participation Fund and led by the ORCID US and Canadian Communities) sparked broader conversations about how repositories can better support ORCID iDs and other PIDs. You will also learn what the global DSpace community shared in a 2025 survey about priorities for PID functionality. By the end of the session, you will better understand how repository communities can advocate for stronger PID integrations and how collaborative working groups can help move improvements forward across platforms.

Sheila Rabun has worked in the academic library field since 2010, with a focus on digital workflows, agile project management, communicating technical information to diverse audiences, and advocating for interoperability in cultural heritage, research, and scholarly communication ecosystems. In her current role at Lyrasis, Sheila manages the ORCID US Community and the Lyrasis DataCite US Community, working with non-profit organizations across the US to leverage open persistent identifiers and shared open standards to make research and scholarly content more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).

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John Aspler graduated from McGill University with a PhD in Neuroscience. Although originally interested in music cognition, his exposure to a stream of problematic neuroscience-related news publications both cultivated and cemented in him an interest in improving public scientific literacy. John pursued his research at McGill University and the Pragmatic Health Ethics Research Unit, where he worked on several projects about the media discourse surrounding people with neurodevelopmental disabilities (e.g., fetal alcohol spectrum disorder). He is also Manager, Canadian Persistent Identifier Community / Gestionnaire, Communauté canadienne des identifiants pérennes at CRKN-RCDR.

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