2026-10-29 –, LUMC06
SURF has been providing IT support to research and academia since 1971 and has been providing PIDs since 2012. Over the last 14 years we have expanded our services across many domains, set up PID consortiums, helped draft national and international policy, helped develop PID selection and service validation tools, developed new PID services and are even hosting this conference! Let our services team take you through SURF’s journey and present what went well, what you might want to imitate, and what you definitely shouldn’t do! We want to inspire you about what an organisation can do and the impact you can have as well as pass on our wisdom to save you some time and a lot of frustration (while maybe sharing a couple of laughs)!
We aim to provide guidance on the various ways National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and similar organizations can support the research ecosystem through the use of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs). We will use SURF, a collaborative organisation managing IT and related infrastructure in Dutch education and research, with a rich history in the PID space as a case study.
Using SURF’s experience we will present advice, lessons learned and red flags when developing and maintaining PID services. We will reflect on how organisations can get involved on a policy level at both the national and international level and discuss the benefits and drawbacks this can bring.
A strong focus will be on the mature handle service and the new RAiD service. We will contrast what is needed to get a service off the ground as well as what is necessary to keep it “persistently” functioning over the decades in changing research landscapes.
Additionally, we will demonstrate how service providers can leverage partnerships with institutions and user communities in order to develop policies, align strategies and build consortia, and how this can strengthen the PID space as well as promote integration between useful PID services.
