Interagency Data Stewardship/Identifiers/UseCases

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DOI Use Cases

Finding a data set referenced in a paper from the DOI in its citation

While reading a journal article a scientist comes across a reference to a data set that might be useful in their work. Since the authors of the paper had formally cited the data set, including a DOI for the data set as a whole, the user accesses the data set by either 1) using the DOI add-on to the Firefox browser; or 2) using one of the several DOI resolvers available on the web. In either case, the user is taken to the home web page for that version of the data set. A place from which data set metadata and documentation can be accessed, which also contains links to access the data, perhaps through several different mechanisms.

Accessing a data set discovered on the ESIP Federation data set registry

While perusing the ESIP Federation data set registry (if we can such a thing to exist), a user runs across a description of a data set they'd like to evaluate for use in their work. Part of the registry entry for the data set is its DOI. They click on this and are re-directed to the home web page for that version of the data set.

NOTES: Such a registry could be at least populated with NSIDC metadata using OAI-PMH metadata harvesting...