How PIDs Demonstrate Identity: And why That’s Better for Research Integrity Than Verification

Abstract

In this session, we’ll ask participants to reframe the issue of identity verification and consider a more robust way to uphold and improve research integrity in scholarly workflows: identity demonstration. Those might sound like the same thing, but there are key differences. For example, we’ll show how difficult it is to verify actual human beings in a global context. We’ll show how identity verification is a concept rooted in centralized, gatekeeper-based systems, while identity demonstration is built over time — like a reputation — bit by bit, with (ideally PID-enabled) validated data contributed by multiple sources.