Lighton,
Here are a few more things to consider. First a few brief words about cost, and
then my technology rant....
== About Cost ==
Yes, DOIs cost more than handles. The actual cost structure depends on which RA
you choose, so it's hard to say how much it will cost you, but DOIs will
definitely cost more. See EZID fees at http://n2t.net/ezid/home/pricing and
CrossRef fees at http://www.crossref.org/02publishers/20pub_fees.html
Mark mentioned several benefits that you receive for the cost of DOIs -- I
agree with all of those. Essentially, DOIs and the metadata associated with the
DOIs are visible/usable by a broader audience than Handles. There are many
external services that read data from the DOI system. There are many tools that
know how to use DOIs. New tools created in the future are likely to support
DOIs. They are somewhat less likely to support Handles.
Personally, I think you should consider the "cost" of starting out with Handles
and then later switching to DOIs. Or vice versa. Once your identifiers are
publicly available, you'll need to support them forever. It is better if you
make the right decision up front. Otherwise, you may end up supporting both
systems.
== About Technology ==
Here, I completely disagree with Mark. Yes, DOIs *are* technically superior to
Handles. Although the core technologies were the same, the DOI system has
evolved and is still getting better, while the Handle system has stayed nearly
the same for many years. A few issues to consider:
1) In my experience, new users of DSpace always require a full day to register
an Handle prefix and properly configure a Handle server -- hardly "out of the
box". The process for registering a Handle server involves generating a binary
file and sending this binary file to a human, who will then decode the binary
file and configure the central Handle system. Why can't the DSpace
administrator do this configuration directly with an online tool? Simply
because the Handle system hasn't been updated in a very long time. Contrast
this with DOIs: Assuming the DSpace code supports your RA, the only setup
required will be editing a few fields in a configuration file.
2) The Handle system requires you to run a "Handle server" on your DSpace
machine. The Handle server is a separate process, which is one more piece of
technology to manage. It requires the sysadmin to open a separate port to the
outside world. It requires maintenance like any other process: ensuring the
process starts correctly when a machine is rebooted, monitoring the process to
ensure it is working correctly, managing log files, etc. Although all of these
are small issues, they add just a little more to the hidden cost of running the
system. DOIs don't require an extra process running on your server; they can
use the existing DSpace processes.
3) The Handle system only recognizes machines by IP address, not by DNS name.
Our production server moved a few weeks ago, and a change of IP address was
required. The DOIs continued to work correctly, because they followed the DNS
name to the new machine. The Handles "broke", because I forgot to send the new
IP address to CNRI. And due to the poor implementation discussed above, even
though I "know" what I'm doing and I have good documentation, fixing this
problem took about 2 hours.
Some of these problems are documented by CNRI:
http://www.handle.net/support.html
I think many people in the DSpace community have come to accept the pain of the
Handle technology as part of the "cost" of running a repository, which is sad.
--- Ryan Scherle
--- Data Repository Architect
--- Dryad Digital Repository
On Jul 15, 2012, at 8:32 PM, Mark Diggory wrote:
> Lighton,
>
> We are working on a contribution to DSpace 3.0 that includes functionality to
> assign external identifiers such as DOI in DSpace. This is based on work at
> @mire did with NESCent on Dryad, but also on some funded contribution work
> that is also happening this summer with WHOI to improve the contribution.
> Our current situation with DOI integration is that you will need to be
> registered with an RA. For Dryad, that provider was originally Datacite, but
> now is EZID. The API used in this situation is novel and unstandardized, each
> situation we've encountered required custom coding in DSpace, thus what is
> being contributed is specifically designed to support customizable ID
> providers on the backend.
>
> You will find that the Handle RA is significantly more cost effective than
> any of the existing DOI RA, this is one of the original intents of using the
> Handle platform for repositories, where costs are a significant concern.
> What you are getting with those additional DOI costs are additional services
> being matketed by those various RA providers, 1. someone else's guarantee for
> the resolution records in a centralized registry rather than their resolution
> being dependent on internal calls back to your DSpace server, 2.
> Metadata/citation registration, linked data exposure, 3. Automatic indexing
> of your items into aggregated catologs, and so on. Unless you have a really
> critical need to integrate based on policies or decisions that were made in
> your organization, I would wiegh the overall cost benefits before getting
> yourselves vested in having to maintain DOI on your repository items.
> Consider that Handles are not only the more cost effective route, they are
> supported "out of the box" on your current DSpace release.
>
> So there are important management questions independent of implementing DOI
> that you will need to answer first. We don't necessarily perceive DOI as
> being technically any better than Handles or other identifier systems at this
> moment, just much more marketed by SaaS providers. Thus our intent for
> future DSpace PID support is that it be extensible and plural in nature. I
> would start with Handles given the low cost of entry, then consider adding
> DOI after a longer "needs analysis" on what benefits DOI will bring to your
> repository.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> On Sunday, July 15, 2012, Lighton Phiri wrote:
> We are at a stage where we would like to integrate a DSpace instance
> with persistent identifiers and would want to make use of DOIs. I
> would like to find out if there is anyone who has had luck doing this,
> just so we know if going the Handle System route may be the only
> viable option.
>
> I should mention here that other than this relatively old forum post
> [1], I haven't found anything comprehensive on the wiki pages or
> online.
>
> [1] https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=28698555
>
> Lighton Phiri
> http://lightonphiri.org
>
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>
> Mark Diggory (Schedule a Meeting)
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