Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community Submitted: September 2003 A Report for the JISC from TSO The Information Management Company Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community Contents Page I Conclusion 3 2 Introduction 4 2.1 Scope 4 2.2 Digital Identifiers 4 2.3 Stakeholders 5 3 Evolution of Digital Identifiers 6 3.1 Non-digital Origins 6 3.2 Digital identifiers for digital objects 7 3.3 Universal resource names 8 3.4 Persistent urls 8 3.5 XRI 9 3.6 Handle 9 3.7 Digital object identifiers 10 3.8 Metadata for digital identifiers 11 3.9 Building digital object identifier systems 11 3.10 Minimum requirements for publishers and the e-learning community 12 4 Digital Object Identifier Lifecycle 14 4.1 Definition 14 4.2 Assignment 14 4.3 Publication 14 4.4 Resolution 14 4.5 Maintenance 14 5 Uses of Digital Object Identifiers 16 5.1 Publication 16 5.2 Discovery 17 5.3 Syndication and assembly 17 5.4 Digital object identifiers and handle processes 18 5.5 Costs 21 6 Use Scenarios 22 6.1 Publishing with a digital identifier 22 6.2 Embedding dois 22 6.3 Identifiers for metadata records 22 6.4 Digital rights 22 6.5 Multiple resolution 23 6.6 Multiple copies 23 6.7 Cross sector example 24 6.8 Researcher 25 7 Further Work 26 8 Recommendations 26 9 References 27 10 Glossary 28 11 Case studies 29 11.1 Publisher case study: granada 29 11.2 The case study: sosig 30 11.3 Publisher case study 2: TSO (The Stationery Office) 34 11.4 The case study 2: sunderland 35 12 Acknowledgements 36 2 www.tso.co.uk Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community 1 Conclusion A digital identifier system adopted by publishers in the higher and further education sectors in the UK should be able to: ● reference multiple object types ● be able to integrate with existing standards ● offer scope for future extensions and migration ● satisfy the needs of the broad JISC community and other sectors ● avoid any semantics or location information in the identifier It is unlikely that the whole JISC community will use a single identifier system for the following reasons. ● A single, local identifier implementation may disable medium to long-term goals of JISC information interoper- ability and it could create a narrow ghetto that restricts interoperability with other sectors. The broader needs of a range of other sectors should and must be considered. ● Many information objects and or metadata records, in particular those that are provided by third party publishers, may be associated with digital identifiers prior to them entering the JISC community. It may be therefore be essential for the JISC community to create, and interact with, a range of existing identifier types to enable exchange. ● Digital Identifiers need to do more than just exist; they must also serve some extended function. Digitally enabled identifiers can support certain information service processes once their particular scheme is known. ● Actionability requires the availability of metadata to access services. These elements can contain descriptive, administrative, classification and service information. ● The provision of associated Identifier Services, such as being able to access a unique description of a resource, which are regarded to be key to interoperability for digital information systems. ● The informal sharing of information resources may have different digital identifier requirements to that of the more formal traditional publishing and dissemination processes. There are some services that are critical and should be centrally influenced by government, including the control of namespaces, a single government registration authority and key resolution services or gateways. In addition, there is a need for other, more informal methods of creating digital identifiers that have low cost and minimal barriers for users. In conclusion, it is prudent to positively review the acceptance of handle based Digital Object Identifiers, which have international deployment across many information communities, in the UK and beyond. They have considerable advantages for information publishing in particular the ability to go beyond an opaque identifier to that of an “actionable” identifier i.e. to be resolved to single and multiple locations and offer authentication capability. 3 www.tso.co.uk Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community 2 Introduction 2.1 Scope This report is concerned with persistent, digital identifiers and their use in the UK higher and further education sectors. It considers what digital identifiers are and what can be done with them. The creators and users of the identifiers may be publishers, authors, JISC services, tutors or learners. Identifiers can be associated with almost anything, but the two main types of items that are considered are: ● digital content objects for e-learning communities ● the metadata records associated with learning objects 2.2 Digital Identifiers Digital identifier is a generic term for a label or name that can be transmitted electronically. They can be associated with electronic, non-electronic or abstract entities such as books, images, reports, metadata records or events. A persistent identifier is intended to provide permanence and is expected to be globally valid and unique. Modern, persistent, digital identifiers are derived from previous work and experience in the publishing world, with its use of ISBN book identifiers, and the world wide web community with its use of URL website addresses. There is a large family of identifiers such as Digital Object Identifier (DOI), Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), Uniform Resource Name (URN), Persistent Uniform Resource Location (PURL) and eXtensible Resource Identifier (XRI). Digital Object Identifiers offer the capability to point to more than one associated location and use metadata (data about the DOI), which provides information as to the title of the resource, its author and nature. Persistent, digital identifiers need to be effectively managed throughout their lifecycle (naming, assignment, publication, resolution and maintenance) in order to be able to guarantee their global validity, persistence and ability to be discovered by searching mechanisms. If this is done effectively then it becomes possible not only to use them for publishing but also for discovery, syndication and assembly into larger resources (e.g., learning material assembled from smaller components). Although Digital Object Identifiers are issued on a cost-recovery business model, like ISBN book identifiers, there can be an overhead in such digital persistent identifiers since central registries need to be maintained and investment made in systems to support publication and discovery. Persistent identifiers for digital objects are designed to address some of the problems with other identifier schemes, such as the moving of objects to new locations rendering them hard to find again. An aim of digital identifiers for digital objects is to make it easier to reference objects re-used across different systems and to foster interoperability. For example, a report might itself contain references to other reports in a digital library system and these could be directly linked to the new report in the references section and be opened up and even paid for by selecting that link. The various features enabled by the main types of identifiers are also considered. Some, such as DOIs enable several other metadata services to be built around them. 4 www.tso.co.uk Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community 2.3 Stakeholders Within the UK Further and Higher Education communities there are several bodies that have a stake in the application of digital identifiers including: ● traditional publishers who wish to make their content, or information about it, available electronically (e.g., e- books, journals, papers) ● learning materials content developers who wish to make their e-learning materials easy to index, find, purchase and integrate within electronic learning environments ● educational institutions and training institutions who wish to locate and integrate educational materials into their programmes ● government bodies who wish to foster access to learning and are interested in opportunities offered by electronic media ● quality agencies who wish to maintain and enhance quality standards in new forms of learning The Office of the e-Envoy has established a set of minimum standards or specifications, called the e-government interoperability framework or eGIF, that suppliers need to be able to conform to in their dealings with government. Part of the eGIF deals with learning, education and training and recommends several specifications including metadata schemes. One of the mandatory elements is a unique identifier. If the identifier were a certain type of digital identifier for digital objects then it could be resolved to multiple locations including information in an official format. The E-learning Strategy Unit, in the DfES, is developing a unified e-learning strategy that includes recognition of the need for technical standards and specifications. The value of particular persistent, digital identifiers such as DOIs in supporting this strategy is being considered. 5 www.tso.co.uk Digital Object Identifiers for Publishers and the e-Learning Community 3 Evolution of Digital Identifiers 3.1 Non-Digital Origins The requirement to be able to name or identify things is not new. Identifiers have been used to uniquely identify journals or books for some time. Knowledge and experience gained from this earlier work has been built on when creating the new digital identifiers. It is useful to able understand the basics of non-digital identifiers. There are traditional, non-digital object identifiers that identify clusters of items and those that identify individual items. Most familiar will be the numeric identifiers which appear on books (International Standard Book Number System - ISBN) and periodicals (International Standard Serial Number - ISSN). These are used to identify clusters of documents contained in a book or serial publication such as a journal.