Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)
DOI
The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a persistent identifier (PID) used to permanently identify various objects. The ID is built by an ISO-standardized syntax and it is also part of the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) system, as an implementation of the Handle System.
It consists of a prefix and a suffix, which are separated by a slash "/". DOI prefix is easily recognizable by the numerical format 10.XXXX*, which characterizes all DOIs and it identifies the entity that registers the object. The suffix can describe the publishing platform (for example, the Journal) or the content with various optional levels of detail. DOI is widely used to identify academic and professional content (such as journal articles, conference abstracts, monograph chapters, etc.), datasets, and online publications from government agencies or commercial companies. In addition, DOI may represent abstract, physical or electronic entities, such as performances, audio or video elements, software and creative works (in electronic or physical format). The attribution of a DOI to an entity is useful for sharing it with a research community, as well as in the management of intellectual property.
A DOI aims to resolve to its target: it works by associating the DOI with the object's metadata, i.e. the URL where the object is located. A DOI remains the same throughout the "life cycle" of the identified object (for example, for an academic article the DOI assigned to the accepted version is the same as the article in the published - VoR version); otherwise, the URL and other associated metadata may change over time.
More information about DOI: https://www.doi.org
More information about Non-Commercial DOI creation service for the University of Padua users
Handle
The Handle is an alphanumeric PID made with a prefix part identifying the naming authority and a suffix part describing the local name of a resource.
For instance, any object inserted in IRIS - Padua Research Archive has a Handle identifier of the type 11577/XXXXXXX where 11577 identifies the archive of the University of Padua.
Unlike DOIs, Handles are always "transparent": they do not directly encode information about the underlying resource but only provide the means to retrieve the associated metadata.
More information about HANDLE at https://handle.net
ORCID
The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an alphanumeric, non-proprietary, identifier. It aims to uniquely identify those who contribute or have a relationship of responsibility in scientific-academic literature (authors/co-authors/collaborators/members of Working Groups, etc. ) or in the creation of a wide range of research outputs (e.g. datasets, peer reviews, grey literature...).
As a unique and persistent ID, it responds to the need to distinguish the contributions of different people who publish or produce research outputs in the case of homonyms, changing family names, different abbreviations or non-unique transliterations.
ORCID can be freely used and discovered, as well as being interoperable with other persistent identifier systems and databases.
ORCID also allows the creation of a link from authored items to a personal profile in the ORCiD.org portal, where other curricular information can be displayed online or retrieved from various databases. The ORCID profile requires to be verified and updated by the identified subject, who can make its content public or private, with different granularities.
More information about ORCID: https://orcid.org
Other Proprietary IDs
PMID and PMCID
Unique numerical identifiers of records in the NCBI PubMed (PMID) and PubMed Central (PMCID) databases. They are automatically assigned to each indexed item. Unlike DOIs, they are internal identifiers meant to be used only in reference or for retrieval of information from NCBI databases.
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Scopus Author ID and Scopus Document ID (EID)
Scopus Author ID is automatically assigned to every author, after publishing at least one indexed article in Scopus. Associated with the author profile in Scopus, Author ID is a unique code that can change when multiple author profiles are merged or corrected. In the author profile of the Elsevier database, the Scopus Author ID can be associated with the ORCID ID, with which it is interoperable and integrable.
Scopus Document ID or EID (Electronic Identifier) is another unique alphanumeric string created to identify every single record in Scopus. EIDs are visible through the document export function in Scopus or in the database item URL. They are recognizable by a syntax format like 2-s2.0-XXXXXXXXXXX. Unlike DOIs, they are internal identifiers meant to be used only in Scopus. They are useful for metadata enrichment and citation count retrieval in CRIS (Current Research Information System) as Padua Research Archive.
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ResearcherID and WOS Accession Number
ResearcherID and WOS Accession Number are PIDs respectively of the contributors (ResearcherID) and contributions (WOS Accession Number) available in different Clarivate products (Web of Science, InCites, EndNote).
ResearcherID is a unique identifier that distinguishes Web of Science researchers, it is associated with any automatically generated author record in the Web of Science Core Collection and with any profile authored directly by Web of Science contributors. It can be associated with the ORCID ID, with which it is interoperable and integrable.
WOS Accession Number is a unique identification number associated with each record in Web of Science. It consists of a numerical identification code (composed of a year + a progressive number of items) preceded by "WOS:" (for example WOS:XXXXXXXXX). Unlike DOIs, they are internal identifiers meant to be used only in above mentioned Clarivate products. They are useful for metadata enrichment and citation count retrieval in CRIS (Current Research Information System) as Padua Research Archive.
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