RAiD (Research Activity Identifier): The Missing Infrastructure for Tracking Research Projects

Maira Elahi
Jan 25
6 min read

Updated: Jan 26

A persistent research challenge is the management of the complex activity involved in a research effort. It’s difficult to keep track of what belongs to whom as time, individuals, institutions, and funding cycles change. A project begins with one grant, gains collaborators at another institution, creates datasets that end up in multiple repositories, creates software that is versioned independently, and eventually produces publications that appear years later under author lists that only partially overlap with the original team, at which point the original project has become an administrative ghost that only exists in records across disconnected, separate platforms. RAiD, or Research Activity Identifier, was established to fill that structural vacuum by recognizing the project as a durable, referenceable entity in the scholarly record rather than an informal title used inconsistently by different systems.

The technical decision to define RAiD at the ISO level is more important than it seems, as it anchors the identifier in long-term governance structures rather than simply the lifespan of a particular platform or a particular funding initiative. This is significant if the identifier is to remain resolvable and relevant during the course of research activities conducted, which might take decades of time and might also entail complex institutional reorganizations. This effectively implies that a RAiD is a long-term reference point whose associated information may change with the project, with versioning that preserves prior states rather than overwriting them, as opposed to a string issued at project start and then forgotten.

RAiD is a PID

RAiD is a persistent identifier (PI) governed by the ISO 23527:2022 standard and implemented via a global registry managed by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) as the registration authority. The provision of services is supported by DataCite and regional agencies such as SURF in Europe. The distinction between projects and funding is where RAiD gains conceptual clarity.

Funding is Not the Research Project

Funding is a financial instrument with a start and end date and a reporting structure that is specific to the funder's requirements, whereas a project is an activity that can combine multiple funding sources, exceed individual funding streams, and continue in a modified form after the formal funding has ended. The system enables Crossref or DataCite funding identifiers to be linked to the RAiD dataset rather than replacing it, recognizing that funding is an investment in research activities rather than a definition of them, which is critical for accurately tracking knowledge creation across institutional and national boundaries. This distinction is especially significant when communicating research results to several interested parties whose accounting systems are not in sync, since data or publications may refer to the same study but use various reporting systems linked with different funding sources.

RAiD is Research Glue!

In terms of metadata, RAiD is designed to serve as a hub within a larger, developing ecosystem of permanent identifiers, rather than as a registry. A single RAiD record can connect contributors via ORCID, organizations via ROR, datasets via DOI, materials via IGSN, financial contributions via Crossref profiles, and software via a persistent link provided by the repository, resulting in a graph structure that allows human users and machine operators to navigate the relationships that were already embedded in the textual or local tabular report. This architecture is no randomness; instead, it is designed to enable interoperability with national and international research infrastructures, including integration into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) workflow through initiatives such as FAIRCORE4EOSC, where RAiD metadata can be used to automate access requests to high-performance computing centers, data centers, and specialized research services, which would otherwise require repeated manual requests and the provision of duplicates.

It is very important to note that:

The RAiD project's metadata is viewed as an object that is actively handled through time rather than something that is declared once at the time of registration and is thought to be immutable.
Projects extend their data repositories, add new partners, alter their methodological approaches, and provide results at irregular intervals.
- The versioned RAiD metadata format is made to document these modifications in a way that preserves the project's prior states while enabling long-term analysis of research activities.
- This is crucial for policy and evaluation because it enables organizations and sponsors to see project standstill periods in addition to project outcomes.
- It makes it possible to investigate abrupt gains in productivity and structural changes, which are frequently linked to modifications in team composition or changes in infrastructure accessibility.
- Over time, this makes it easier to comprehend how resources are transformed into results and how research capacity grows, both of which are challenging to determine from publishing databases alone.

RAiD Utility for Researchers

Although administrative friction is a visible sign of deeper structural fragmentation, RAiD's immediate value to researchers is not its conceptual value. Project data may be utilized across grant reporting systems, archive submission procedures, ethics review apps, and institutional research platforms once it is permanently recorded in a machine-readable registry. This significantly lowers human transcribing mistakes and does away with the need to duplicate almost identical project descriptions and participant lists. Institutional review platforms and infrastructure access application processes will be expedited. Errors resulting from human transcription will be significantly decreased, and identical project descriptions and participant lists do not need to be re-entered. This also affects the precision with which institutions present collaborative advantages to policymakers, business partners, or international organizations, as well as the dependability of research records and the acknowledgment of contributions.

Aligning RAiD with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and the concept of an open academic infrastructure is not just a matter of advocacy, but a structural requirement that shapes the system's architecture and governance. The human- and machine-readable landing page allows RAiD to serve as both an administrative record and a public record of research work. Open metadata and open-source infrastructure reduce dependency on proprietary platforms, as their business models may conflict with the long-term goals of academic preservation. This is particularly true for research infrastructures that are open, and it’s particularly important in cases where they are intended to serve the public interest, such as transparency and reproducibility of research, and where they cannot support major, multidisciplinary innovations. Closed project registries are difficult to integrate into the global research landscape, and they cannot support large-scale, cross-disciplinary research.

Implications of RAiD

The broad significance of RAiD is that it changes the perception of what is considered the core infrastructure of research. Traditionally, the focus has been on data storage, publication platforms and high-performance computing, while project information was regarded as an internal administrative matter for universities and funders.

By integrating these projects as a significant and long-term part of the academic research environment, RAiD brings the organizational aspect of research under serious consideration, linking it more effectively with the technical infrastructure, rather than allowing it to remain a source of inefficiency and information loss.

Conclusion

Over time, RAiD can change the way collaboration is structured, how collaboration is measured in terms of infrastructure use and outcomes, and how the research system understands the overall impact of long-term programmes, which do not meet the needs of a particular grant or institution.

In this sense, RAiD is integral to correcting the structural open point in the way research activity is digitally represented, rather than simply providing another identifier. When projects become stable reference points that resist cycles of funding, staff changes, platform migrations and national borders, it will be possible to create research records that reflect how knowledge is actually produced, rather than how it was recorded at a particular administrative moment.

RAiD's technical architecture, which is based on standard metadata, persistent identifiers, and interaction with the wider PID ecosystem, allows this change to occur without researchers having to fundamentally change the way they work. and for this very reason, its impact is likely to be gradual and infrastructural, and if successful, will eventually be taken for granted in the same way as DOI and ORCID iDs are today.

At the infrastructure level, myLaminin was the first RDM platform to integrate with the ARDC RAiD and can mint and update project RAiDs based on project events. myLaminin is also participating in the USRAiD Pilot initiative. Any institutional subscribers on the myLaminin RDM platform can simply sign a no cost Service Point agreement with the ARDC and they will automatically be minting and maintaining RAiDs.

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Maira Elahi (article author) is a myLaminin intern and an Accountant student in the Ivey AEO program at Western University.