This case study is part of a series that has been produced within the study on “Risks and Trust in pursuit of a well-functioning PID infrastructure for research” commissioned by the Knowledge Exchange in July 2021. The main outcome of this work is a report examining the current PID landscape with an emphasis on its risks and trust-related issues. The case study looks at the RePEc Author Service (RAS), an independent community owned and run DAI service within Economics. Established before ORCID emerged, RAS survives on the basis of low running costs, various sponsors, and volunteers. It demonstrates how community-trust, accepting uncertainty around sustainability and governance, can help a PID service run for a long time. The report, Building the Plane as We Fly It: the Promise of Persistent Identifiers, and remaining complementary case studies have also been published.