Matthew Mayernik
Deputy Library Director, National Science Foundation
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Many universities provide shared instrumentation and core facilities to support research and data generation. Tracking datasets and other research outputs from these services can be a challenging and surprisingly complex process, with varied practices across research communities. This presentation will discuss insights and recommendations from a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project to develop community-based best practices for persistent identifier (PID) adoption for research instruments, platforms, and facilities. This project, FAIR Facilities and Instruments, is a collaboration between the University of Colorado, Florida State University, and the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. The project is focused on enhancing transparency and reproducibility of research by providing reliable and important contextual information about how and where data were created. In this presentation, we will present an overview of our final recommendations based on three years of workshops, focus groups, and other community engagement efforts. The recommendations include high-level guidance and best practices for implementing instrument, platform, and facility PIDs, along with specific recommendations tailored to various stakeholders, including data repositories, libraries, funders, and scholarly publishers. The presentation will also touch on management and responsibilities related to PIDs in times of change, when research facilities and instruments face uncertain futures.
