DOI® News
March 2009
DOI® News is a public news release. Information contained within
this newsletter may be reproduced and disseminated to all interested parties.
In this issue:
- European initiative launched to facilitate access to research data
- Launch of "Actionable ISBN" using DOI System
- 2009 IDF Open Meeting: "Ensuring Persistence"
The DOI System is to be used in a recently announced European initiative to facilitate access to research data. A group of Europe's leading research libraries and technical information providers have established a partnership to improve access to research data on the internet.
The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), the British Library, the Library of the ETH Zurich, the French Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST), the Technical Information Center of Denmark, and the Dutch TU Delft Library will establish a not-for-profit agency that enables organisations to register research datasets and assign persistent identifiers to them, so that research datasets can be handled as independent, citable, unique scientific objects. Further countries and organisations are encouraged to join the partnership.
The long term vision of the partnership is to support researchers by providing methods for them to locate, identify, and cite research datasets with confidence. The partnership builds on work done by the TIB in its role as a DOI Registration Agency since 2005.
The ISBN International Agency and the International DOI Foundation have agreed a way of including the International Standard Book Number, ISBN, in a DOI syntax in a standard way (known as the Actionable ISBN, or ISBN-A), thereby expressing the ISBN within the DOI system. The ISBN has long been also available in a bar code form, and this development follows the same model.
An application of this system has already been announced by
mEDRA, the Multilingual European DOI Registration Agency, and further applications are expected to follow.
The ISBN-A and the ISBN are used in different systems for different purposes. The ISBN-A allows the ISBN (already widely used or trading physical products) to take advantage of new possibilities digital networks offer, e.g.:
- Links to a preferred quality-controlled internet destination where fuller descriptive information, additional or related content or e-commerce options can be provided;
- Variable licensing dependent on the user;
- Locating the optimal fastest URL for downloading large files;
- Dynamic tracking of digital-product sales.
By definition, an ISBN-A identifies the same thing as the ISBN, and is assigned on behalf of the ISBN agency. ISBN-As do not automatically exist for every ISBN; they exist only once an appropriate DOI agency has registered them in the DOI System. Several ISBN agencies are already also DOI Registration Agencies.
The 2009 International DOI Foundation open meeting, "Ensuring Persistence", will be held in San Francisco on October 7th 2009, following the successful series of annual meetings in previous years. Participants are welcomed from a wide range of communities and interests. This year's theme covers the technical and social infrastructure needed to ensure persistence of identifiers of content, including continuity, guaranteeing access, and providing a supportable funding model.
A program for this one day meeting, including well-known speakers from a wide variety of organisations, is now available; registration is now open. The IDF meeting is planned in conjunction with other meetings related to digital preservation taking place at the same venue, including the International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPres 2009).
The DOI is a system for interoperably identifying and exchanging
intellectual property in the digital environment. A DOI assigned to content enhances a content producer's ability to trade electronically. It provides a framework for managing content in any form at any level of granularity, for linking customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated copyright management for all types of media. The International DOI Foundation, a non-profit organization, manages development, policy and licensing of the DOI to registration agencies and technology providers and advises on usage and development of related services and technologies. The DOI system uses open standards with a standard syntax (ANSI/NISO Z39.84) and is currently used by leading international technology and content organizations.
This is a service announcement for the International Digital Object
Identifier Foundation and has been prepared to inform you of developments to enable digital copyright management of intellectual property. For more information, please send your request to contact@doi.org.
Prepared 18 March 2009
