The Challenge of Ensuring Persistency of Identifier Systems in the World of Ever-Changing Technology

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-013

Keywords:

persistent identifier, governance, URI, Handle, DOI, design principles, platform independent model

Abstract

The identification of information objects has always been important with library collections with indexes having been created in the most ancient times. Since the digital age, many specialised and generic persistent identifier (PID) systems have been used to identify digital objects. Just as many ancient indexes have died over time, so too PID systems have had a lifecycle from inception to active phase to paralysis, and eventually a fall into oblivion. Where the indexes within the Great Library at Alexandria finally succumbed to fire, technology change has been the destroyer of more recent digital indexes.

We distil four PID system design principles from observations over the years that we think should be implemented by PID system architects to ensure that their systems survive change. The principles: describe how to ensure identifiers’ system and organisation independence; codify the delivery of essential PID system functions; mandate a separation of PID functions from data delivery mechanisms; and require generation of policies detailing how change is handled.

In addition to suggesting specific items for each principle, we propose that a platform-independent model (PIM) be established for persistent identifiers – of any sort and with any resolver technology – in order to enable transition between present and future systems and the preservation of the identifiers’ functioning. We detail our PID system—the PID Service—that implements the proposed principles and a data model to some extent and we describe an implementation case study of an organisation’s implementation of PID systems that implement the Pillars further but still not completely.

Penultimately, we describe in a Future Work section, an opportunity for the use of both the Pillars and the PIM; that of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Permanent Identifier Community Group who is seeking to “set up and maintain a secure permanent, URL re-direction service for the web”.

Author Biographies

Nicholas J. Car, Geoscience Australia Canberra ACT

Nicholas Car is the Data Architect for Geoscience Australia, Australia's geospatial science government agency. He formerly worked as an experimental computer scientist at the Australian government research organisation, CSIRO, building semantic web and other IT systems to manage government and research data. At GA his role is to provide advice to the agency on its data management and systems and to lead the data modelling team. His research interests include information modelling, provenance and the semantic web, all three of which he believes are vital for transparent and reproducible digital science and all thee of which rest on good persistent identifiers for digital objects. He is heavily involved with Australian inter-agency and international metadata and Linked Data collaborations including co-chairing the Research Data Alliance's Research Data Provenance Interest Group and as a member of the Australian Government Linked Data Working Group. In the latter group be has been involved with the establishment of a persistent URI domain for the Australian government; both the technical and multi-agency governance arrangements.

Jens Klump, CSIRO Mineral Resources, Perth, WA

Jens Klump is a geochemist by training and OCE Science Leader Earth Science Informatics in CSIRO Mineral Resources and is based in Perth, Western Australia. His involvement in the development of publication and citation of research data through Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) sparked further work on research data infrastructures, such as enterprise data management systems and long-term digital archives. Jens current work focuses on data in minerals exploration, looking at data capture and data analysis. This includes automated data and metadata capture, sensor data integration, both in the field and in the laboratory, data processing workflows, and data provenance, but also data analysis by statistical methods, machine learning and numerical modelling. Jens is the vice-president of the International Geo Sample Number Implementation Organization (IGSN). The organisation coordinates the development and introduction of persistent identifiers for physical specimens of research materials.

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Published

2017-04-04

Issue

Vol. 16 (2017)

Section

Research Papers

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