ePIC

The eResearch Persistent Identifier Consortium ( ePIC ) is an organisation that provides services to help research data be registered, stored and found using persistent identifiers (PIDs) based on handles. (For information about PIDs and handles, see www.pidconsortium.net/?faq=what-are-pids-and-what-are-handles .)

The Swedish National Data Service ( SND ) is a member of ePIC. The SND works to make research data more openly accessible and, in particular, supports Swedish higher education institutions and other research organisations in establishing and operating local Data Access Units (DAUs) which provide local research data support functions.

PDC participates in ongoing projects with the SND under the auspices of the ePIC consortium. In particular, PDC maintains the ePIC software system for PIDs in Sweden on behalf of the SND. This work is important as the amount of research data that is indexed via the ePIC system has increased significanly in recent years. In addition, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology Library (KTH Library), PDC and Chalmers University of Technology (Chalmers) are collaborating on a project with the SND which relates to the work of the ePIC consortium.

PDC also hosts mirrors for the two biggest database sites within the ePIC consortium: Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung Göttingen (GWDG) in Germany and the SURF association of Dutch educational and research institutions in the Netherlands. That means PDC keeps complete backups ("mirrors") of both of those databases that can be used if there are problems with either of the databases.

For more information or questions about PDC's activities within ePIC, please contact: