US RAiD Pilot

FAQ

Why RAiD?

RAiD is a Persistent Identifier (PID) and ISO standard (ISO 23527:2022) specifically for identifying and registering information about research projects to allow multiple stakeholders to share project information and contribute RAiD metadata. While ORCID is the open PID for researchers and ties a researcher’s affiliations, activities, and works information together all in one place, RAiD is the open PID for tying together all of the information about a research project and tracking the project over time. RAiD metadata is meant to include ORCID iDs for individual researchers who are involved in the project, ROR IDs for organizational stakeholders, DOIs or other relevant object identifiers for outputs, and any relevant Grant DOIs associated with the project. While many funders are starting to assign DOIs to grants/awards, not every grant has a 1:1 relationship with a project. Many projects are long-term, receiving multiple grants and involving multiple researchers and organizations as time goes on. RAiD provides a way to reliably consolidate and share that information. 

RAiD is specifically designed to support the dynamic nature of research projects: researchers and partner organisations may join or leave the project, project names may change, outputs are created over time, etc. RAiD tracks these changes and allows for a snapshot of the state of a project at a particular point in time. It is more than just a persistent identifier, it is also a global registry of research projects, with capabilities tailored to such projects, including:

  • Project-specific metadata — Uses a metadata schema specifically designed for research projects
  • Dynamic, automatically versioned metadata record — RAiDs are dynamic and designed to evolve as a project changes and matures. Version control is automated, for example, so that all changes to a RAiD are available at any time
  • Multi-user editing environment with access control — Collaborative editing of RAiD metadata, with appropriate access controls, allowing researchers or research support staff to create and edit RAiDs
  • Automatically generated landing pages — Automatic generation of standardised landing pages, obviating the need for organisations to build and host landing pages
  • Extensible metadata — Allows customisation and extension of that metadata schema for various domains or constituencies by RAiD Registration Agencies, while maintaining a stable core of metadata and coordinating any local adaptations
  • Support and development within a global RAiD community — Has a growing global user community developing good practice around project identification and description.

What does participation in the US pilot involve?

Once the US RAiD infrastructure is available, interested pilot organizations would experiment with the RAiD API and/or submit project metadata through a web form to test out the RAID creation workflow and the process for making updates to existing RAID metadata, give feedback on any improvements that might be needed from a user perspective, and get a sense of the usefulness of RAiD for each organization. Organizations and groups with the interest and resources to integrate the RAiD API with local systems or workflows are welcome. Pilot organizations’ use cases would be documented and shared, and participants may be asked to present on their experience with RAiD at webinars or community calls. At this time, there are no costs to pilot participants and no requirements for how much or how little a pilot organization would be involved, as there is room for flexibility depending on the level of interest and resources available. If your organization has a potential use case for RAiD, please email projectpid@ucsd.edu.

What is the RAiD metadata schema?

The RAiD metadata schema can be found at metadata.raid.org. RAiD uses an extensive metadata schema specifically for projects in order to accurately and effectively meet the needs for tracking research projects over time. RAiD metadata is dynamic, meaning that there is flexibility in which properties can be included in RAiD metadata records. Additionally, as changes are made to RAiD metadata, new information is appended, rather than over-written. Versioning takes place at the metadata level, so changes are visible over the course of a project.

The RAiD metadata schema avoids storing redundant information. For example, with relatedObjects, RAiD stores only the identifier and its relationship to the project. The specific creators, contributors, and other details for a specific relatedObject can be retrieved from its own metadata. Similarly, information about contributor affiliations should be stored in the contributor’s ORCID record, rather than the RAiD record. 

Are there any examples of real RAiD records?

All RAiDs are openly accessible with open metadata that can be viewed on built-in RAiD landing pages. Existing live RAiDs can be explored at static.prod.raid.org.au/raids. RAiDs can also be viewed in DataCite Commons by specifying “RAiD Registry” as the repository type in the search interface; see: https://commons.datacite.org/doi.org?query=*&repository-type=RAiDRegistry 

Who is responsible for initially creating a RAiD for a project?

The creator of the RAiD will vary depending on the scenario. The following stakeholders are most likely to create a RAiD (note that other use cases may emerge involving different stakeholders, so this is not an exhaustive list):

  • Individual researcher: Individual researchers are most likely to know all of the details about a project they are leading or involved in from the beginning, so it makes sense for individual researchers to have the ability to create RAiDs through a project management software system, software platforms provided and maintained by a research institution, lab, facility, library, etc., or directly in the RAiD graphical user interface when authenticated through a RAiD service point (organization that is participating in RAiD creation).
  • Research organization, Lab, Facility, Library, etc.: A research organization may choose to create RAiDs to track and manage projects that the organization is affiliated with, leading, or responsible for. The organization would serve as a RAiD service point, using the RAiD API to automate the RAiD creation process in coordination with other relevant software systems and workflows. Or, individual administrators can authenticate through their service point to manually create RAiDs using the graphical user interface.
  • Funding organization: A funding organization may choose to create RAiDs to track activity related to overarching funding areas, such as a cohort of grants awarded to different researchers/organizations as part of a programmatic research initiative.

How will contributors know if a RAiD already exists for a certain project?

Project title and contributor information are required for creating a RAiD. ORCID iDs must be used to specify project contributors. When an individual’s ORCID iD is added to a RAiD record for the first time, they will receive a notification in their ORCID inbox, asking them to authorize RAiD to read from and write to their ORCID record. This notification lets the contributors know that a RAiD exists for the specific project. If the researcher authorizes RAiD as a trusted party on their ORCID record, the project will be added to their ORCID record automatically as a membership entry in the Professional Activities section of their ORCID record (indicating that they are a member of the project). Subsequent RAiDs containing the contributor’s ORCID iD will be automatically written to their ORCID record, and they will receive a notification each time a new project is added to their ORCID record via RAiD. An example of an ORCID record containing project information from RAiD can be found at https://orcid.org/0009-0009-6625-8630.

Is RAiD being used in other countries?

RAiD is currently being used in Australia, where for example, the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) is actively using RAiD for the National Environmental Science Program (NESP). NESP is allocated to four hubs, which then further allocate funding to projects taking place around Australia. RAiDs minted by the DCCEEW and the various NESP project hubs can be explored:

SURF in the Netherlands is piloting RAiD and planning to provide a RAiD service for the European Union as part of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 

The African PID Alliance (APA) has been exploring the use of RAiD in APA systems and services. 

The Digital Research Alliance of Canada has started work on a three year Canadian RAiD pilot in partnership with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN).

Expressions of interest from stakeholders in other parts of the world have also recently been shared, and we expect to see more interest as time goes on.

For example, the following article explores the use of RAiD in Research.fi, Finland’s national service for collecting, integrating and disseminating information on research conducted in Finland:

  • Tommi Suominen, Clifford Tatum, Sonja Sipponen, Walter Rydman, Shawn Ross, “Piloting the use of RAiD in Research.fi”, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 249, 2024, Pages 224-231, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2024.11.068