The two suggestions so far are PURLs and OpenURLs. I'm pretty sure openURLs are out. As I understand it these basically summarise the metadata associated with a publication and depend on one metadata item already being a unique id (eg an ISBN), which is just what I don't have. I'm also not sure about the interaction I'd have with link resolvers which don't recognize my site as a valid data source.
PURLs sound more promising, but I still don't think they're quite right. They assume a permanent location associated with a particular publication, whereas if the ebooks I generate are free I don't care what their location is (in fact it would be better for me if others host them), though I do care if two copies in different locations are the same (and so have the same uniqueid). I think I want two things: a unique id independent of location (a URN), which would be stored in the epub metadata, and a PURL which would give a constant reference to my particular copy of the epub, for use by library link resolvers. And I still haven't found a suitable URN type. ISBNs, NBNs and ISSNs are out. So are DOIs. OIDs (http://www.oid-info.com) sound possible, but I can't work out how to find a registering authority. So far of the ones I've looked at UUIDs seem the best as not needing a central registration authority, just ironic they're a Microsoft-derived standard. How does CKAN id its entries? Or does it just reference external urls and rely on the external hosts to manage their own URNs? Graham Peter Suber wrote: > Hi Graham, > > You should consider OpenURL (a NISO standard since 2005), > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenURL>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenURL > > Here's an argument that OpenURL is superior to DOI, > <http://www.chemspider.com/open-chemistry-web/openurl.html>http://www.chemspider.com/open-chemistry-web/openurl.html > > > Good luck, > Peter > > > At 03:38 PM 9/2/2009, graham wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I'm new to this list so this may be a faq - if so please point me in the >> right direction! >> >> Is there any free equivalent to the DOI naming system (http://doi.org/) ? >> >> I'm looking for something to generate unique ids for a potentially large >> set of publications in .epub format. I'd like something which would let >> them be part of a larger ecology when released (as with doi numbers) but >> which doesn't cost money (don't have any) and isn't a proprietary system >> (not certain about doi - it's certainly copyrighted and trademarked) >> >> Thanks >> Graham >> >> _______________________________________________ >> okfn-discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss > _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
