Index

Persistent Identifiers (PI)

Persistent identifiers (PI) are long-lasting references to digital resources. A PI is a unique name for digital objects of any kind (essays, data, software, etc., especially data records in research data management). This name, usually a longer sequence of digits and / or alphanumeric characters, is linked to the web URL of the digital resource. If the URL for the resource changes, only the address to which the PI refers has to be changed, whilst the PI itself can stay the same. This guarantees, for example, that a resource cited using the PI can still be found even if its physical storage place has changed. Examples of persistent identifiers are digital object identifiers (DOI), uniform resource names (URN) and handles.

Using a specific example, this video clearly explains what persistent identifiers are.