20 Years of Persistent Identifiers – Which Systems are Here to Stay?

Jens Klump,Robert Huber

doi:10.5334/dsj-2017-009

Abstract

Web-based persistent identifiers have been around for more than 20 years, a period long enough for us to start observing patterns of success and failure. Persistent identifiers were invented to address challenges arising from the distributed and disorganised nature of the internet, which often resulted in URLs to internet endpoints becoming invalid. Over the years several different persistent identifier systems have been applied to the identification of research data, not all with the same level of success in terms of uptake and sustainability. We investigate the uptake of persistent identifier systems and discuss the factors that might determine the stability and longevity of these systems. Persistent identifiers have become essential elements of global research data infrastructures. Understanding the factors that influence the stability and longevity of persistent identifier systems will help us guide the future development of this important element of research data infrastructures and will make it easier to adapt to future technological and organisational changes.

Highlights

Web-based persistent identifiers have been around for more than 20 years, a period long enough for us to start observing patterns of success and failure
For semantic applications the use of Cool URIs has been proposed and it has been questioned whether Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) are necessary in a world of Cool URI (Bazzanella, Bortoli, and Bouquet 2013)
This might seem like a straightforward approach, but it turns out to be difficult to define a measure for the uptake of persistent identifier systems because the sizes of research data repositories and the granularities vary by orders of magnitude

Summary

Introduction

Web-based persistent identifiers have been around for more than 20 years, a period long enough for us to start observing patterns of success and failure. Klump and Huber: 20 Years of Persistent Identifiers – Which Systems are Here to Stay? One way to assess the success of particular identifier systems is to survey their adoption by research data repositories.

Results

Conclusion