What It Means for Universities to Run Their Own PDS: The Potential of DID as Academic Infrastructure

Fragmented Identity

Researchers' identities are fragmented. Grant IDs, ORCID, institutional email addresses, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and various social media platforms. We're "borrowing" multiple identities. The core of "who I am" depends too heavily on institutions and platforms.

From "Belonging" to "Carrying"

The conventional way of thinking: "I belong to an institution"—the institution is a container, the researcher is its contents. The DID way of thinking inverts this: "I carry my relationship with institutions"—the researcher is the container, affiliation history is the contents.

This shift matches the reality that researchers move between multiple institutions over their careers. Postdocs, transfers, visiting positions. These become not "relocations" but "additions to one's history." The change from @tanaka.u-tokyo.ac.jp to @tanaka.kyoto-u.ac.jp conventionally looks like a break. With DID, it becomes visible as the path one person has walked. Publication history, co-authorship networks, citation relationships attach to the person, not the institution.

What University PDSes Would Enable

For institutions, researchers' public statements and discussions would accumulate on their own infrastructure. Networks with alumni would persist even when handles change. No need to depend on external platforms for "official verification."

For researchers, handles become business cards. Followers and post history travel with you when you move. Papers, preprints, and casual discussions integrate under one identity.

For the academic community as a whole, institutional domains would underwrite the credibility of statements, and researchers become visible across institutional boundaries. If grant IDs and ORCID are persistent identifiers for publications, DID could become a persistent identifier for all academic communication.

Rental, Company Housing, Permanent Residence

How do we think about social media? Consider three metaphors.

Current social media accounts are "rentals." The platform is the landlord, and you never know when you might be evicted. University PDSes are more like "company housing." The institution provides it, but you can move. And DID as the ideal is like "permanent domicile." Your address changes, but your registration persists.

Researchers' statements wear multiple faces: as experts, as institutional members, as individuals. University PDSes give institutional grounding to the first two. Personal statements can be separated onto a different PDS. AT Protocol is designed to make this kind of separation natural.

The Path to Reality

Of course there are obstacles. The burden on IT departments, the preconception that "social media is private," and concerns that institutional PDSes might mean surveillance.

A staged approach would start by offering only domain handle authentication, with PDSes remaining on bsky.social. Next, pilot institutional PDSes for those who want them. Finally, consolidate official communications on institutional PDSes while leaving personal use free.

For universities to run PDSes is not merely a technical choice. It's one answer to the questions "What is a researcher?" and "What is the role of academic institutions?" From social media to academic infrastructure. AT Protocol's architecture makes that transition possible.