Participant Perspectives | Howard Ratner, CHORUS
Howard Ratner
Please explain a little about your background and why you’re interested in persistent identifier (PID) metadata and its enrichment.
I have been working in scholarly communications and publishing for nearly 40 years, with a strong focus on digital infrastructure and metadata. I have been involved with the founding of Crossref, ORCID, LOCKSS, and most recently CHORUS, and other organizations dedicated to making research more discoverable and accessible. My interest in persistent identifier (PID) metadata comes from the need to ensure that scholarly content remains reliably linked, attributed, and enhanced with rich metadata over time.
PIDs—like DOIs, ORCID iDs, RORs, and others—are critical in maintaining the integrity and interoperability of research outputs. However, they are only as powerful as the metadata attached to them. Enriching PID metadata means improving connections between research objects, funding data, institutional affiliations, and more, which ultimately helps researchers, publishers, and funders track impact, ensure proper attribution, and streamline workflows.
My work has been about bringing together stakeholders to improve metadata standards and infrastructure, making sure PIDs are not just static identifiers but dynamic links to a growing ecosystem of knowledge.
What excites you most about the potential for collaborative enrichment of PID metadata (e.g. to improve research discoverability, impact tracking, better reflect the global nature of scholarly communications)? What do you think will be the most challenging aspect to address?
What excites me most about the collaborative enrichment of PID metadata is the potential to create a truly interconnected and dynamic research ecosystem. By linking persistent identifiers—whether for researchers, institutions, research facilities, grants, or data sets —we can significantly enhance research discoverability, track impact more effectively, and ensure that scholarly contributions are properly credited across the entire research lifecycle.
One of the biggest opportunities is making scholarship more globally inclusive. Too often, metadata systems reflect biases toward well-established institutions and researchers, making it harder for work from underrepresented regions or disciplines to gain visibility. A collaborative approach to PID metadata enrichment can help address these gaps by ensuring that research outputs from diverse communities are properly linked, discoverable, and acknowledged.
The biggest challenge, however, is getting widespread adoption and engagement across all stakeholders. Metadata quality varies significantly across publishers, funders, and institutions, and not everyone has the same incentives or resources to enhance their metadata. There’s also the issue of governance—who takes responsibility for maintaining and curating enriched metadata over time? Ensuring sustainability, interoperability, and buy-in from a wide range of contributors will be key to making this vision a reality.
What successful examples of community collaboration in scholarly infrastructure have you witnessed that could inform the proposed COMET model’s development?
There are several successful examples of community-driven collaboration in scholarly infrastructure that could provide valuable insights for the development of the COMET model. Here are a few that stand out:
CHORUS has demonstrated how collaboration between publishers, funders, and open-access advocates can support public access to research. By leveraging existing infrastructure and integrating with multiple stakeholders, CHORUS has facilitated seamless compliance with open-access policies. This model highlights how alignment with policy mandates and shared goals can drive participation.
Both ROR and OpenAIRE emphasize the power of open, interoperable identifiers that can connect research outputs to institutions, funders, and projects. Their success lies in community-driven governance and the adoption of open metadata standards. COMET can learn from their commitment to openness, interoperability, and decentralized contributions.
Crossref has long been a model of how a collaborative infrastructure can enhance metadata quality. Through initiatives like Cited-by, Funding Data, and Participation Reports, Crossref has encouraged publishers to improve the completeness of their metadata, leading to better discoverability and tracking of research outputs. The key lesson here is that community participation, incentives, and transparency drive better metadata practices.
ORCID has successfully engaged publishers, funders, and institutions to integrate ORCID iDs into their workflows, ensuring researchers are uniquely identified and their contributions properly attributed. The success of ORCID comes from broad stakeholder buy-in, clear value propositions for different participants, and ease of integration with existing systems.
DataCite has worked with repositories, funders, and institutions to standardize metadata for research datasets. Their approach to persistent identifiers for datasets, coupled with metadata best practices, has helped ensure research data is discoverable and linked to related publications. The takeaway for COMET is the importance of community governance and well-defined metadata schemas.
How could better and more complete PID metadata, derived from the proposed COMET model, help to advance your goals, those of your organization, or your communities?
CHORUS aims to improve open access to funded research through enhanced persistent identifier (PID) metadata. Enriched metadata could transform scholarly communications in several ways, including:
Open Access & Compliance
Stronger links between publications, datasets, and funding sources to verify open-access compliance
Standardized tracking of access status (open, embargoed, restricted)
Automated policy checks reducing manual compliance work
Research Impact Tracking
Precise attribution through PIDs for authors, funders, institutions, and datasets Enhanced citation and usage tracking across research outputs
Better visibility into downstream impact of funded research
Discovery & Interoperability
Seamless integration with scholarly publishing and funder platforms and PID registries
Standardized institutional affiliations for accurate global attribution
Enhanced machine-readable metadata powering search and analytics tools
Global Research Inclusion
Improved visibility for contributions from underrepresented regions
Multi-language support and regional metadata standards
Broader stakeholder participation in metadata contribution
Stakeholder Efficiency
Automated metadata collection and updates
Reduced duplication across PID registries
Richer analytics for more effective decision-making
I believe that the COMET model would strengthen CHORUS' role as a trusted partner for open-access compliance, and will benefit all stakeholders across the research ecosystem.
What benefits do you envision enriched PID metadata enrichments, such as is being aimed for through COMET, will have on the broader research ecosystem?
What is special about COMET is that it is taking downstream metadata corrections / enhancements and sending them back upstream to benefit all stakeholders. This will lead to administrative efficiencies and create transformative benefits across the broader research ecosystem, impacting researchers, institutions, funders, publishers, repositories, and policymakers.
Why do you think organizations interested in PID metadata enrichment should consider contributing resources to fund the first phase of development for the proposed COMET model?
Organizations invested in PID metadata enrichment should strongly consider contributing resources to fund the first phase of development for the COMET model because of the long-term benefits, efficiencies, and strategic advantages it offers to the entire research ecosystem.
Investing in the first phase of COMET is a strategic, cost-effective decision that will bring long-term benefits for publishers, funders, institutions, repositories, and research organizations. By contributing early, organizations can shape the infrastructure, reduce future costs, enhance research tracking, and strengthen global research discoverability tailored to their needs.
Direct benefits to early participants could include: priority access to enriched metadata and tracking tools before wider adoption; direct influence over metadata standards and governance to align with existing workflows; recognition as leaders in metadata innovation and Open Science; and help establish governance, sustainability, and operational roadmaps
The future of persistent identifier metadata is collaborative -- COMET is the opportunity to build a shared, sustainable, and enriched metadata ecosystem that benefits the entire scholarly community. Now is the time to invest.