RAiD Service Policy
To be read together with the RAiD Service Schedule (User Agreement)
1 Purpose
This statement describes the core policies underpinning the ARDC RAiD Service.
2 Background
The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is a publicly funded national research infrastructure capability that collaborates with a range of partners to establish underpinning infrastructure that enables Australian researchers to gain research advantage through data. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are a core component of this national infrastructure and key to world class, global research infrastructure. ARDC’s commitment to PIDs and our strategy in offering PID services are outlined in the ARDC Persistent Identifiers Policy .
Reflecting the global nature of a research project identifier, the RAiD initiative is international and provides services and value to the global research community. Beneficiaries, users and collaborator service providers of the RAiD service are all international in scope. ARDC deliberately plays a catalytic, coordinating, and leadership role in this emerging global infrastructure.
As part of its PID strategy, ARDC provides the RAiD Service to registered users (“service points”) to allow them to create (“mint”) identifiers for research projects as part of national infrastructure to support excellent and impactful research in Australia.
3 Policies
3.1 Service functionality
The Research Activity iDentifier (RAiD) is a persistent identifier for research projects and supports data management across all phases of research by placing the research activity (or project) at the centre of research workflows, creating a chain of provenance, improving discovery and access, and ensuring that output is attributable and reportable. It also supports the F.A.I.R Principles for research.
The ARDC RAiD Service allows research organisations in Australia and internationally to assign and manage identifiers for research projects. A research project is an activity. It takes place over a period of time, has a set scope, is resourced by researchers and research support staff and uses and produces research data. A RAiD has two parts: The RAiD handle and the RAiD metadata.
RAiD is built on the Handle system, a non-commercial decentralised identifier resolution system, established in 1995. Operated by CNRI, the Handle system is used by many other higher level systems (e.g. DOI) and by many existing content management systems e.g. institutional repositories. A RAiD handle is minted via the RAiD API using the ARDC’s Handle Service. It is persistent and globally unique.
The RAiD metadata records activities associated with the project to which the RAiD Handle has been assigned. The RAiD metadata includes persistent identifiers that relate to research entities or objects encountered by or related to the activity. This includes participant institutions (by use of ISNI, GRID or ROR), researchers (email or ORCID ID), instruments (DOI or other), stored data (Handle, DOI or other), physical specimens (IGSN) and outputs (DOI or other).
3.2 Service scope
To ensure that data relevant to research can be allocated a RAiD, the ARDC RAiD Service is designed for use by Australian and international research organisations or data centres relevant to Australian or international research, such as those run by Government agencies and universities. In line with the pending ISO standard certification for RAiD (number), the scope for RAiD is as follows:
In-scope:
Research projects - an activity that takes place over a period of time, has a set scope, uses and/or produces data, is resourced by researchers and their collaborators. RAiD applies to both funded and unfunded research projects.
Out of scope:
Research grants - a monetary award from a research funding agency to conduct research. RAiD can record information about a grant associated with a project by recording the grant identifier, such as a CrossRef DOI , in the metadata for the project. Of course the grant(s) that support a project are in scope to be included in the RAID project metadata and related identifiers.
Projects not relevant to research
Further scope considerations
Additional use cases for broadening the scope of RAiD are welcome. These need to be discussed with and approved by ARDC prior to implementation.
3.3 Service access
Clients are required to register with ARDC [insert link to user agreement] before access to the RAiD service is granted. Once registered with ARDC, clients will be set up as a RAiD Service Point and can access the RAiD API and web dashboard to register and manage RAiDs and metadata either programmatically or by using the manual interface.
3.4 Service style
The ARDC RAiD Service encourages users of the service to maintain information in their own systems about the project and the digital objects recorded in the RAiD metadata. We also encourage the integration of RAiD minting into automated workflows to enable comprehensive coverage of projects. For both these reasons, use of the API interface is encouraged.
3.5 RAiD structure
The structure of the RAiD will be in accordance with RAiD ISO Certification (pending). It consists of a Handle minted through the ARDC Handle service and metadata stored on a Cloud service.
3.6 Currency of RAiDs
ARDC assumes no responsibility for the currency of information of RAiDs minted using the ARDC RAiD service. It is the responsibility of the client who minted a RAiD to ensure it is kept up to date and integrated with the systems that hold the most current information.
3.7 Service availability and support
ARDC will provide service availability and support for users of the ARDC RAiD service. Although ARDC aims to ensure maximum availability of the RAiD service, planned and unexpected outages will occur. Notice of all planned outages will be distributed via email prior to the event. Users of the service should ensure that software being integrated with this service is designed to cope with occasional service unavailability and that contact details provided to ARDC are kept up to date.