TLDR version: I will not object further nor complain if you go the DOI path (except occasionally with a wink and nudge to close colleagues). Thanks for listening to my input!
I just have a few followups, to fully explain my perspective. I am not aware of DOI servers being used to archive content. In fact not sure how they would know what to archive, given they just point to another resource, which could have arbitrarily many links to its parts (if the document is maintained as a set of pages, for example). I'm interested to know more. I accept the judgment of the library community that DOIs are perfect unique identifiers for bibliographic materials, that is their clear community choice. On the other hand, the expert librarians I talk to at Stanford are open to the possibility that DOIs are not the primary references for certain other kinds of digital content. The kind of content where I am most experienced is semantic content, where IRIs are the typical (but not universal) identifier of choice, because of the W3C semantic standards. So, in short, I think one identifier type does not fit all needs. I accept that DOIs were designed to decouple content; they were poorly designed to resolve content, without knowing what to add to them to make them resolvable. That said, you can generally find a DOI with Google, and yes, DOIs are easy(ier) to re-point by design. I also concede that the DOI infrastructure is well-enough funded (and consistently-enough-used for this kind of thing) that the DOI infrastructure will not cause as many long-term headaches as most IRIs will. So I will not be trying to argue further, but I do want to note: - updating the DOI requires authority to update the DOI - over time, that authority must be passed on to others in an organized way, ideally through organizational accounts and permissions - if you have not properly prepared your organization for managing the DOIs, you will not be able to update the DOIs without at least some pain and suffering (the more rigorously DOI servers care about transitioning ownership, the more pain and suffering you'll face—since you don't want people stealing your DOI maintenance role from you) - you remain at the mercy of the company managing the DOI, and the services they provide. These realities seem to map one-to-one with the realities of creating IRIs to decouple the content from the particulars of how and where it's served (I recommend Tim Berners-Lee's Cool URIs document, it's a short read and a fun bit of history). Either way, to have a successful persistent identifier, you have to be thoughtful, you have to invest resources in managing the maintenance and succession processes, and you have to understand that this is an indirection service that is run by an organization, one which you may or may not have full control over for the (eternal!) life of the identifier. If you manage those issues, either technology is equally effective, with only minor differences in cost-per-identifier and user pain to resolve the identifier. -- You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/127#issuecomment-359139705
