PIDfest 26

Have you ever been asked by a researcher to register a DOI on their behalf? Or were you the researcher looking for access to DOI registration services? Have you had a member leave your consortium with no plan for long-term DOI stewardship? DataCite consortia provide DataCite services to organizations in their region, and the people who run consortia (DataCite Consortium Leads) have a lot of leeway to decide how their consortium operates and who gets to join; however, as DOIs have become more widely used - and as DOI use cases continue to expand to different entities (e.g., awards and grants, blog posts) - a significant number of complex institutional relationships are becoming clearer among potential member institutions, not all of which promise clear paths toward being able to register DOIs.

In Canada, we've faced a number of challenging and interesting situations - members quitting without telling us, several organizations joining together under one membership, organizations that are not legal entities trying to join (e.g., individual labs), researchers with no way to access DOI services as individuals - which we want to share. We do not yet have a clear policy on how to address every situation, but each time we learn about the ways in which individuals and organizations are related to each other (in hierarchies and non-hierarchically), we see different ways that communities of practice could evolve. Some libraries might have policies to support individual scholars and research initiatives, while others might only have capacity and resources to focus on their collection. What should be done to support those cases that fall through the crack, where outputs could really use a DOI?

While our thornier issues are focused on membership and stewardship, you might have radically different concerns in your region - this is also a space to share your questions, concerns, and insights around your local DataCite community of practice with leaders of other DataCite communities. Or else, perhaps you are having trouble accessing DataCite to register DOIs - what barriers and obstacles do you face?

In this Birds of a Feather session, you will be able to share what kinds of organizations are eligible to participate in your region, how your local consortium or community of practice is funded (if at all), what kind of support consortium leads can provide, and how you deal - or have dealt - with challenging membership and stewardship edge cases. You will have space to discuss any tricky problems you face, share success stories, and understand how consortia vary around the world. DataCite provides virtual spaces for consortia to learn from each other, and this session will provide an important opportunity for consortium leads to share their points of view and strengthen a community of practice in person.

This session could lead to: Community-developed best practices for member recruitment, DOI registration and stewardship, and DataCite service-provision, insight into how others do things around the world, and opportunities for clearer guidelines and policies to be developed centrally or in your region.