Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A RAiD minted at project award for a 5-year ARC Discovery Project, with ORCID iDs of CIs added as they join, DataCite DOIs added as outputs are deposited, and a Funder ID added at award.
- Is an instance
A multi-institution collaboration using one RAiD as the project's stable reference in publications and progress reports.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A grant award number from a funder's own database is not a RAiD.
- Not an instance
A DOI for the final report of a project is an output identifier, not a project-activity identifier.
Editorial commentary
RAiD (Research Activity Identifier) is a persistent, ISO-standardised identifier — ISO 23527:2022 — for a research project or activity as a whole, developed by Australia’s Research Data Commons (ARDC). RAiD is a Handle-based identifier, resolvable at raid.org, and functions as a “container” identifier: rather than identifying a single output (the job a DOI does), it identifies the ongoing research activity itself and accumulates links to related identifiers over the activity’s lifetime — ORCID iDs for participants, ROR IDs for participating organisations, DOIs for outputs as they are produced, Crossref Funder IDs and RAiD funding identifiers, and instrument PIDs.
Why a container-level identifier, distinct from a DOI
Most persistent-identifier infrastructure identifies a specific, finished thing — a person (ORCID), an organisation (ROR), a dataset or article (DOI). None of these identifies the project as an ongoing entity across its full lifecycle, from proposal through award, execution, and eventual outputs, spanning multiple institutions and funders as team composition changes. RAiD fills that gap: a single RAiD is minted early (typically at proposal or award) and stays stable as a reference point while the graph of linked identifiers around it grows, giving funders, institutions, and CRIS systems one durable handle for “this project,” independent of any single grant number, institutional project code, or output DOI, none of which individually cover the whole activity.
Governance and adoption
ARDC continues to steward RAiD as its lead developer; the metadata schema and resolution infrastructure are documented at metadata.raid.org and raid.org. Adoption began in Australia, where ARDC is based, and has extended into use by research offices and CRIS integrations in New Zealand and the UK as institutions build project-level identifier support into their systems — check current adoption directly at raid.org before citing a specific institution’s status, since implementation is still actively expanding rather than settled.
What the identifier itself looks like
A RAiD is expressed as an HTTP URI that resolves to a machine-readable metadata record for the activity, not merely to a landing page — which is what makes it usable as the "project ID" field in a CRIS, a funder system or a publication record. That is the practical problem RAiD solves: the same project otherwise carries a different local code in every institutional, funder and publisher system it touches, with nothing to reconcile them. RAiD sits alongside ORCID for people, ROR for organisations and DOIs for outputs as the missing project-level member of that identifier stack.
Worked example / counter-example
A five-year multi-institution research council award mints a RAiD at award stage; as chief investigators join, their ORCID iDs are linked; as outputs are deposited, their DOIs are linked; as the funder confirms the award, its Funder ID is linked — the RAiD becomes the single stable reference cited in progress reports and publications throughout, even as the underlying grant may span multiple sub-awards. A funder’s own internal grant-award number is not a RAiD — it identifies the funding transaction within one funder’s own database, not the cross-institutional research activity as a globally resolvable, standards-based identifier; a DOI minted for a project’s final report identifies that one output, not the multi-year activity that produced it.
References
- ISO 23527:2022, “Information and documentation — Research activity identifier (RAiD).”
- ARDC, “RAiD: Research Activity Identifier” (ardc.edu.au); metadata.raid.org; raid.org.
Also known as
Research Activity Identifier
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="RAiD"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/raid" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/raid",
"name": "RAiD",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/raid",
"description": "Research Activity Identifier, an ISO-standardised persistent identifier (ISO 23527) for a research project or activity, providing a stable handle around which related people, organisations, outputs, instruments, and funding can be linked over the activity's lifetime.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/raid",
"sameAs": [
"Research Activity Identifier"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:09:47",
"dateModified": "2026-08-23T06:25:16",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
