Permanent unique identifiers
From Genomic Standards Consortium
Introduction
A comparison table of three persistent identifier frameworks has been provided; these were chosen because of their existing or proposed implementation within the life science field.
Comparison Table
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Persistent Identifier |
DOI |
LSID |
ARK |
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Characteristic |
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Name |
Digital Object Identifier |
Life Science Identifier |
Archival Resource Key |
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Existing Implementations |
Scientific Journals assign DOI to research papers
Names for Life resolution service for DOIs assigned to taxonomic concepts, for use by publishers, i.e. taxonomic links directed to DOI resolution service
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GBIF Global Biodiversity Informatics Facility (GBIF) has announced that it, will use LSIDs
TDWG At same time as GBIF, the Taxonomic Databases Working Group agreed on use of LSIDs www.tdwg.org
Taverna LSIDs are assigned in Taverna, workflow software developed at University of Manchester http://taverna.sourceforge.net/
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California Digital Library ARK identifier in use at the California Digital Library.
W3C Health Care and Life Sciences Semantic Web Interest Group Use of ARK identifiers is a topic of discussion in W3C Health Care and Life Sciences Semantic Web Interest Group |
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Developer |
International DOI Foundation (IDF) http://www.doi.org/welcome.html
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Object Management Group an open-membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications that enable data integration www.omg.org |
California Digital Library www.cdlib.org
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Advantages |
multiple, stable, and persistent paths to end-users (from names for life web site)
simplify link maintenance |
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Resolution via http, i.e. ARK identifier can be typed into web browser and onus is on identifier authority to provide resolution service |
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Principal Information Resource |
Digital Object Identifier System www.doi.org
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Life Science Identifiers specification
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California Digital Library (CDL) – Introduction to ARK Identifiers [1] ARK |
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Further reading |
Digital Object Identifier System www.doi.org
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Life Science Identifiers specification
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California Digital Library (CDL) – Introduction to ARK Identifiers http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/ark/
The ARK Persistent Identifier Scheme: the complete ARK specification. |
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Identifier Syntax |
10.1234/NP5678
two components, the prefix and the suffix
prefix before / is the unique naming authority suffix after / is the unique resource identifier that can accommodate any existing identifier |
urn:lsid: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: GenBank:T48601:2
urn:lsid:organisation-identifier: digital-object-type: digital-object-identifier:version
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[http://domainname/]ark: /NAAN/name[quantifier] elements in brackets are mutable NAAN is the identifier for the organisation |
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cost to assign an identifier |
Cost involved for each DOI |
No cost |
No cost |
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How to assign an identifier |
Requirement for organisation to be assigned a DOI prefix by a registration agency
Registration agency free to set fees for assignment of individual DOIs |
Organisation is free to assign its own identifiers, the organisation id is a domain name which is managed by the domain name authorities and should be owned by the organisation that issues and lsid |
Request organisation id from CDL, use appropriate software to generate ARK-compatible identifier. Recommendation for identifier to include a terminal check digit |
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How to resolve an identifier |
A DOI is a URN and requires software to translate URN to data object. Web sites are available for this purpose e.g. http://dx.doi.org, although organisations would most likely want to develop their own resolution service implementation to serve metadata and data objects as required
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An LSID is a URN and requires software to translate URN to object location
IBM has developed software for this purpose
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An ARK identifier is a URL and can be resolved in a web browser, with onus on organization to provide resolution software – no publically-available software at present for this purpose |
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What information is provided when an identifier is resolved |
Digital object |
Digital object metadata |
Digital object metadata commitment statement |
