Publication Date:
2011-07-26
Description:
In recent years, a number of data identification technologies have been developed which purport to permanently identify digital objects. In this paper, nine technologies and systems for assigning persistent identifiers are assessed for their applicability to Earth science data (ARKs, DOIs, XRIs, Handles, LSIDs, OIDs, PURLs, URIs/URNs/URLs, and UUIDs). The evaluation used four use cases that focused on the suitability of each scheme to provide Unique Identifiers for Earth science data objects, to provide Unique Locators for the objects, to serve as Citable Locators, and to uniquely identify the scientific contents of data objects if the data were reformatted. Of all the identifier schemes assessed, the one that most closely meets all of the requirements for an Unique Identifier is the UUID scheme. Any of the URL/URI/IRI-based identifier schemes assessed could be used for Unique Locators. Since there are currently no strong market leaders to help make the choice among them, the decision must be based on secondary criteria. While most publications now allow the use of URLs in citations, so that all of the URL/URI/IRI based identification schemes discussed in this paper could potentially be used as a Citable Locator, DOIs are the identification scheme currently adopted by most commercial publishers. None of the identifier schemes assessed here even minimally address identification of scientifically identical numerical data sets under reformatting. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s12145-011-0083-6 Authors Ruth E. Duerr, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0449, USA Robert R. Downs, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, 202 Geoscience, Lamont-Doherty Earth Obs., Palisades, NY 10964, USA Curt Tilmes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA Bruce Barkstrom, NASA/NOAA, Asheville, NC 28804, USA W. Christopher Lenhardt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA Joseph Glassy, R&D, Lupine Logic Inc., 1121 East Broadway St, Suite 128, Missoula, MT 59802, USA Luis E. Bermudez, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), 483B Carlisle Drive, Herndon, VA 20170, USA Peter Slaughter, Earth Research Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3060, USA Journal Earth Science Informatics Online ISSN 1865-0481 Print ISSN 1865-0473
Print ISSN:
1865-0473
Electronic ISSN:
1865-0481
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Computer Science
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