Guest Post — Navigating the Drift: Persistence Challenges in the Digital Scientific Record and the Promise of dPIDs

The internet was not designed to provide a permanent digital record of scientific research. This post looks at current approaches to addressing the shortcomings of the existing Internet technology, identify remaining bottlenecks, and suggest how they could be resolved. Upgrades to the backbone of the scientific record could go a long way toward addressing the replication crisis and the increasing challenges for publishers to spot fake research. 

Why Are Publishers and Editors Wasting Time Formatting Citations?

The majority of time spent in editing and formatting citations in the publication process is time wasted. We now have in place nearly all the components to use persistent identifiers, linked metadata, and style sheets to improve how citations can be structured and processed. Using these tools can significantly improve the accuracy of references and reduce the time editors spend on this production function. Even when automated, we bounce between linked metadata, then to text, then to metadata again.