Interagency Data Stewardship/Identifiers/Table
From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)
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' | ' | Identification scheme | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' |
Axes | Criterion | DOI | LSID | OID | PURL | ARK | UUID | XRI | Handles | URI/URN/URL |
Technical Value | 1. Is it recommended by any standards bodies? If so, which ones? | ANSI/NISO; under consideration by ISO | I3C and OMG | Basic ISO and ITU stds | OCLC | No | ISO/IEC and IETF | IETF; US military | IETF | |
2. Are there any security issues with it? | no more than any other web address | no more than any other URN scheme | not as part of schema itself | First version yes, fixed since then | No | those of any web address | ||||
3. How scalable is it to very large numbers of objects? | Very | Very | Very | Very, but limited by capabilities of OCLC resolver | Very | 2^128 values | Very | very | ||
4. Is it interoperable with other identification schemes? | are registered URI\'s and is handle based; local ID\'s can be from some other ID scheme (e.g., ISBN number or local accession ID) | other internet approaches | Readily interoperable with DOI\'s; potentially operable with UR*, PURLs, and UUIDs depending on detailed structures of those | TBD | used by other schemes (e.g., DOIs); can be represented as a URN or URL | Other schemes use these as a basis | ||||
5. How compatible is it with the main internet naming schemes? | very | LSID\'s are URN\'s | IP addresses are a form of OID | PURL are URLs that require redirection | very, ARKs are URL\'s and can be used as such | very, Can be used as URN\'s | very (see above) | by definition | ||
6. Does it require third party maintenance (e.g., a registry and a registry maintainer?) | Yes, both registry and resolution services | Not explicitly - though authorities (and therefore a registry of authorities) are required | yes, registries and registry maintainers | Yes | Yes, Name Assigning Authorities are registered | Yes, to maintain the tools used to create them | Yes, Global Handle Registry | Yes, domain names for URL\'s; IANA registers URN schemes | ||
7. How dependent is it on a naming authority and how do you know that naming authority will be in business decades or more into the future? | Very but well supported by the publishing industry | central registry required? | A matter of choice | OCLC maintains the resolver | California Digital Library is the naming authority; has multi-institute support; and about 60 employees | No naming authority required | Corporation for National Research Initiatives manages the Global Handle Registry; has a fee based business model | ? | ||
8. What is the expected longevity of the underlying technologies? How long will the scheme remain viable? | as long as the publishing community supports them (are used by lots of journals) | widely used in the life sciences; so likely to be long-lived | ensure scheme should be as long-lived as the federal government and equivalent international bodies | are currently more than a decade old and the WorldCat system is based on it (I.e., a long time) | as long as http is viable and users use this scheme | Simple, easy to implement technology - so should last some time | as long as http is viable and users use it | |||
User Value | 1. Will publishers allow it in a citation? | Definitely! | Yes, though extent of journals accepting this not established | not currently accepted by publishers | cite as a URL | cite as a URL | not currently accepted by publishers | not explicitly accepted except as a DOI | URL\'s are citeable | |
2. Does the identification scheme have any additional trust value? | no | no | may depend on how the heirarchy is defined | no | Yes, ARKs explicitly reference a maintenance policy | no | no | URN more than URL - but still not really | ||
3. Does the identifier have meaning? (Should identifiers be transparent or opaque?) | Could but not necessary | Up to the user | Up to the user | Up to the user | Supports but discourages an opaque component of the identifier | Opaque ID | Could but not necessary | up to the user | ||
Archive Value | 1. How maintainable is the identification scheme when data migrates from one archive to another (or even from one location in an archive to another)? | Theoretically easy; but requires commitment by archives; could be confusing if the ID\'s are not opaque (e.g., if data with an ORNLDAAC ID were moved somewhere else) | As maintainable as any other URN scheme; requires commitment by archives | requires commitment by archives | very - in fact that\'s why they were invented; but they assume the name of the item doesn\'t change; requires commitment by archives | Easy to migrate all the data from one archive to another; moving just some is more difficult; requires commitment by archives | Unique across all domains, so will not change as object moves | requires commitment by archives | URL\'s not very (redirection); URN\'s more so but requires commitment by archives | |
2. Are there any actual charges or costs involved (e.g., DOI’s may cost only a few cents each; but, even a small archive may have dozen’s of millions of files that should have identifiers)? | Yes, though charges per name are minimal | no | Depends on choice of registration authority and related technologies | no | No | No | CRNI charges to assign a prefix to an organization and annual maintenance thereafter | yearly fees for domain names…? | ||
3. Does the identification scheme handle data that is not on the web? What about physical objects? | no, no - digital resources only | web-centric | Probably no conceptual difficulties | no - only envisioned for on-line resources | No, No - on-line resources only | Yes, yes (but nobody seems to do this?) | no, no - digital resources only | no, no | ||
Potential criteria | Existing usage within ESDC\'s | ORNL | CIESIN |