2026-10-28 –, Naturalis 02
In this presentation, you will hear about the process of collecting use cases and developing best practices for PIDs for Instruments and Facilities in the Australian context.
If you are interested in learning more about how facilities and instruments can be identified in a National context, then this session is for you. Attendees will gain an insight into how the i4iOZ (identifiers for instruments, Australasia) Community of Practice have developed best‑practice guidelines for facility and instrument identification across the country.
These best practices are informed by the Australian National PID Strategy and international standards such as PIDINST and the work of the FAIR Facilities and Instruments Network. This session will also provide real-world use cases to support effective PID adoption from organisations implementing these approaches.
Facilities and Instruments are key research infrastructures. Accurate and standardised identification of them is necessary to contextualise relationships between them and research entities (e.g., people, data, physical objects, software platforms, projects, etc.) and is essential for reporting to funders on uptake and usage.
In Australia, the challenge of identification is magnified by geographical and organisational complexities. Research instruments are frequently distributed across vast distances, making centralised tracking difficult. Furthermore, national facilities often operate under a collaborative federal funding model, with their physical infrastructure housed within state-based organisations (e.g., universities or state-level agencies). This complex landscape makes the identification and citation of individual instruments, their host facilities, and links to related entities complex and complicated.
In response to this complexity, the Australian National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategy and the subsequent National PID Roadmap have provided high-level strategic guidance. Key components include:
The Identification of Five Priority PIDs: Focusing the community's efforts on a core set of identifiers that deliver maximum benefit.
The Australian National PID Benchmarking Toolkit: A resource providing practical metrics and methods for institutions to assess their current PID practices (10.6084/m9.figshare.29281667).
National Level Stakeholder Engagement: Ensuring that the strategy is informed by, and tailored to, the diverse needs of the Australian research community.
While the national strategy provides the why, the how and the who of policy implementation
can remain a source of confusion. Recognising a significant community need for shared use cases and the development of common practices around specific PIDs and research entities, the i4iOZ (Identifiers for Instruments in Australasia) Community of Practice developed Best Practice Guides for the Facility and Instrument Identification in the Australian context.
i4iOZ is a Community of Practice that focuses on instrumentation and related PIDs, such as facilities, and is uniquely placed to develop best practices drawing on discipline needs and international standards, including the Research Data Alliance PIDs for Instruments (PIDINST) Working Group and the US NSF-funded FAIR Facilities and Instruments Research Coordination Network and other National PID Plans.
In this presentation, you will hear directly from those on the ground about the process of selecting the right identifier and the challenges of implementation across Australia’s complex research landscape, and the experiences of the following organisations will be shared:
The University of Queensland (UQ)
Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (CMM)
CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)
Microscopy Australia
Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)
This presentation is designed for Facility Managers, Research Managers, Research Infrastructure staff, Research Data Managers and researchers who are ready to move from planning to implementation and are looking to use cases for inspiration and business cases.
Attendees will leave with practical use cases to inspire their own implementation efforts and solid business case examples to drive adoption of the recommended Australian practices.
Product Manager, Identifier Services, ARDC
PID Nerd
Dr David Poger (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8794-5688) was awarded his PhD in Structural Biology from Joseph Fourier University (Grenoble, France) in 2005. He then moved to Australia where he studied the structure and dynamics of biological membranes, protein receptors and membrane-active compounds using computer simulations at The University of Queensland. In 2020, David joined Microscopy Australia, a consortium of nine university-based microscopy facilities, as Research Data Manager. He assisted microscopy facilities in data management by developing best practices and guiding them in their journey to FAIR data. In 2025, David joined the Australian Imaging Service and National Imaging Facility as Data Operations Manager. David participates actively in several projects and working groups in Australia and overseas to develop and promote best practices in research data management and build national network that facilitate data management, analysis, sharing and reuse.
Geochemist and Group Leader at CSIRO, working at the intersection of minerals exploration, data, and digital technology. Curious, cross‑disciplinary, and focused on practical impact.