Researchers have witnessed exponential growth in the number of journals and articles published over the past few decades. Much of this expansion is often attributed to the public introduction of the internet in 1993. However, it has also created challenges such as broken links, researcher name ambiguity, and difficulty in distinguishing between different articles and journals. To address these challenges, persistent identifiers (PIDs) were introduced.

Persistent identifiers are unique, long-lasting, and machine-resolvable codes that serve as permanent references to digital objects, people, or organisations on the web. Unlike standard URLs, PIDs ensure that resources remain accessible even if their location changes, making them essential for scholarly publishing processes.

Some of the key features of PIDs include reliability and resolvability. A PID never changes and therefore helps to avoid broken links. Each PID is a unique identification and assists with the disambiguation of authors, research data, publications and more. The embedded metadata often found in PIDs provides more context, for example publisher details and publication dates.

The following common types of PIDs are available in the research and publishing environment:

  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier): Used for articles, datasets, and publications.
  • ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID): Identifies individual researchers throughout their careers.
  • ISSN/ISBN: Mandatory identifiers for journals and books
  • Handles/URNs: Used by some repositories for persistent, non-commercial identification.
  • ROR (Research Organisation Registry): Identifies research organisations and institutions.
  • ARK (Archival Resource Key): Provides stable, long-term access to digital information, physical objects, and concepts.
  • IGSN (International Generic Sample Number): Identifies physical samples in scientific research.

The importance of PIDs lies in the enhanced discoverability of research outputs, to find them, cite and track them and therefore increasing the visibility of the item, author, resource or sample. Disambiguation and interoperability are two other very important features of PIDs. They work across different systems, libraries and publishers to ensure seamless data connections. They also contribute to the reproducibility and trustworthiness in scientific scholarly communication.

For authors and researchers, one of the most important PIDs is your ORCID iD. Stellenbosch University has been a member of ORCID since 2015. By February 2026, at least 9 504 SU-affiliated researchers and students have ORCID IDs. About
5 250 of these have added a current affiliation to their records. For the University to fully realise the benefits of this affiliation, it is essential that researchers actively maintain their ORCID records and link them to the institution and their research outputs. Researchers can link their ORCID iDs to their researcher profiles on Sympletic Elements and then export their research output from here to ORCID. The more well-populated ORCID records there are, the more value the research community will gain from participating in ORCID.

Please contact Marié Roux for further assistance.