Who Owns Our Knowledge?: How ORCID iDs, DOIs, and Other PIDs Help Researchers Protect and Share Their Work

This year’s International Open Access Week asks the question: “Who owns our knowledge?” For researchers, this question can be personal. You generate new insights, data, and publications — but in an increasingly digital and global research ecosystem, how do you ensure your contributions are recognized, connected, and reusable?

A part of the solution relates to persistent identifiers (PIDs) — small but powerful pieces of infrastructure that make open science work.

What Are PIDs and Why Should You Care?

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are stable, unique, and internationally recognized links that connect your research identity and outputs across systems and networks.

• ORCID iDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs) identify you and ensure your work is correctly attributed no matter where you publish or what name you publish under.
• DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) identify things such as journal articles, datasets, or software, ensuring they remain findable and citable even if URLs change.
• ROR IDs (Research Organization Registry) identify organizations helping you link your affiliation to your outputs.

Together, these identifiers form a connected web of research metadata. When you include your ORCID iD in your publications, link your datasets with DOIs, and ensure your affiliation has a ROR ID, you not only make it easier for others to find your research, measure the impact of your work, and make connections across organizations and disciplines.

Why PIDs Matter for Ownership and Openness

When we talk about who owns knowledge, we often think about paywalls or publishers. But ownership also has another dimension: recognition and agency.

PIDs give researchers control over how their contributions are connected and cited.

• Your ORCID record becomes your verified research CV — portable across institutions and funders.
• A DOI ensures your dataset or article can be found, cited, and reused — giving credit where it’s due.
• Together, PIDs make your research traceable, trusted, and visible to the world.

In addition, PIDs make open science possible and ensure you remain visible within it. They help shift ownership from systems that obscure contributions to a network that recognizes and connects them.

How to Strengthen Your Research Identity

1. Register for an ORCID iD (free at orcid.org) and use it when you submit manuscripts, data, and grant applications.
2. Keep your ORCID record updated — link your publications, datasets, and peer review activity.
3. Deposit your data and code in repositories that assign DOIs, so your outputs are citable.
4. Use PIDs when citing others’ work — DOIs and ORCID iDs help maintain a transparent, connected scholarly record.
5. Advocate for PID adoption in your lab or department — it benefits collaboration, reproducibility, and visibility.

Need help or have questions? Contact us at the MBLWHOI Library! 

• Samantha Porter, our Scholarly Communications Librarian can help you set up or update your ORCID record, answer questions you have about citations, provide training on PIDs for your lab, and more.
• Debbie Roth – our Repository Manager – can answer your questions about minting DOIs for your published work, and Ashley Jester – the Director of WHOI Research Data, Library, and Archival Services – can answer questions about minting DOIs for your data.

Rethinking “Ownership” in Open Science

Who owns our knowledge? In open science, ownership doesn’t mean control or restriction. It means credit, connection, and contribution. By using PIDs, you ensure that your work, and the work of others, remains discoverable, linkable, and openly shared. 

Written by Samantha Porter, Scholarly Communications Librarian, sporter@mbl.edu