A choice of persistent identifier schemes for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo)

Abstract

Persistent identifiers (PID) to identify digital representations of physical specimens in natural science collections (i.e., digital specimens) unambiguously and uniquely on the Internet are one of the mechanisms for digitally transforming collections-based science. Digital Specimen PIDs contribute to building and maintaining long-term community trust in the accuracy and authenticity of the scientific data to be managed and presented by the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) research infrastructure planned in Europe to commence implementation in 2024. Not only are such PIDs valid over the very long timescales common in the heritage sector but they can also transcend changes in underlying technologies of their implementation. They are part of the mechanism for widening access to natural science collections. DiSSCo technical experts previously selected the Handle System as the choice to meet core PID requirements. Using a two-step approach, this options appraisal captures, characterises and analyses different alternative Handle-based PID schemes and the possible operational modes of use. In a first step a weighting and ranking the options has been applied followed by a structured qualitative assessment of social and technical compliance across several assessment dimensions: levels of scalability, community trust, persistence, governance, appropriateness of the scheme and suitability for future global adoption. The results are discussed in relation to branding, community perceptions and global context to determine a preferred PID scheme for DiSSCo that also has potential for adoption and acceptance globally. DiSSCo will adopt a ‘driven-by DOI’ persistent identifier (PID) scheme customised with natural sciences community characteristics. Establishing a new Registration Agency in collaboration with the International DOI Foundation is a practical way forward to support the FAIR (findable, accessible interoperable, reusable) data architecture of DiSSCo research infrastructure. This approach is compatible with the policies of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and is aligned to existing practices across the global community of natural science collections.

Scaling Identifiers and their Metadata to Gigascale: An Architecture to Tackle the Challenges of Volume and Variety

“…IGSN is not the only system facing the challenge of accessing and indexing large and diverse metadata catalogues. Similar challenges are faced by trans-disciplinary systems like the DiSSCo (Hardisty et al 2021), DataCite (Neumann & Brase 2014), Bioschemas (Michel & The Bioschemas Community 2018), and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) (Schwardmann et al 2021). The challenges can be mapped to the dimensions scale, heterogeneity, and adoption.…”

“…In research areas like geology, biology, or archaeology, it is common that thousands of samples are analysed before the data are then compiled into a dataset and described in a publication, which in turn, can then be aggregated in synthesis studies. It is, therefore, a reasonable assumption that publications and data are underpinned by orders of magnitude larger numbers of samples (e.g., Hardisty et al 2021;Lannom et al 2019). There is growing evidence that the scale at which identifiers are being applied in the research ecosystem is rapidly moving from the millions to billions, that is, Gigascale.…”

“…The growing adoption of PIDs for individual samples across disciplines made many aware of the need to accommodate very large numbers of identifiers. In their scoping report, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) consortium estimates that natural history collections hold approximately 1.5 billion objects (Hardisty et al 2021). This growth in numbers would put considerable strain on current architectures for minting, managing, publishing, finding, and accessing identifiers, and most existing systems would not be able to scale.…”

“…PIDs for samples serve as this anchor. For example, physical samples can be linked to the virtual world by their digital representations (e.g., Lannom et al 2019) and can be referenced by globally unique Web-resolvable persistent identifiers (e.g., Hardisty et al 2021;Klump et al 2021). The growing number of PIDs for samples, their description in online catalogues, and the required interoperability between these systems introduce three challenges: very large numbers of samples present the challenge of volume, while the many different use cases and ways to describe samples introduce the challenges of variety and variability.…”

Creating Virtuous Cycles for DNA Barcoding: A Case Study in Science Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Diplomacy

“…Less than 2% of the records in the datasets contained at least one colon (:), the standard delimiter in the Darwin Core Triplet (DwC), and we found no "doi:" voucher identifiers. DWC (31) and DOI: (32) are two systems of unique identifiers that have been discussed as a community standard. Without a public-facing specimen database or commonly used specimen identifier formats, online access to specimen records is limited, which reduces opportunities for community-based data curation.…”