# Pilot evaluation of Collection API with PID Kernel Information

## TL;DR

This paper evaluates the Collection API with PID Kernel Information to improve data referencing in digital ecosystems, focusing on how to best locate key collection information within recommended standards.

## Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of two RDA recommendations for managing persistent identifiers and collection representations in digital data ecosystems.

## Key findings

- Optimal placement of collection information varies by use case
- Evaluation of RDA recommendations highlights best practices
- Guidelines for implementing PID and collection standards

## Abstract

As digital data become increasingly available for research, there is a growing awareness of the value of domain agnostic Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for data. A PID is a globally unique reference to a digital object, which in our case is data. In an ecosystem of connected digital objects, a PID will reference a digital object, and the digital object will be a simple entity, a collection of homogeneous objects, or a set of heterogeneous objects. In this paper, we study two recent recommendations from the Research Data Alliance (RDA) that both address pieces of an ecosystem of connected digital objects. The recommendations address Persistent ID records and representations of collections of data. We evaluate different approaches in where to locate key information about a data collection between these two component solutions.