[topicmapmail] Document Object Identifiers/CrossRef

[Daniel Rivers-Moore]

Yes, Eliot, I agree with you - the DOI initiative is very interesting.
I'm not entirely clear how far they've got in making the aspiration
real, but certainly what they aim to do is very close to what you, in
conversations with me at various points in history ;-) have said you
think is needed to make URNs or URN-like things deliver on their
promise.

The body responsible for the DOI standards is the IDF (International DOI
Foundation) http://www.doi.org/welcome.html which describes its mission
and origins as follows: "The Foundation was created in 1998 and supports
the needs of the intellectual property community in the digital
environment, by the development and promotion of the Digital Object
Identifier system as a common infrastructure for content management. The
Foundation is a registered not-for-profit organization, controlled by an
Executive Board elected by the members of the Foundation. The activities
of the Foundation are controlled by its members. Membership is open to
all organizations with an interest in electronic publishing and related
enabling technologies. We also welcome comments and participation from
non-members. Much of our work is informal, via e-mail and discussion
groups; please feel free to contact me directly or sign up to one of our
e-mail lists to join our activities."

The "me" in tgh paragraph above is Norman Paskin, Director of the IDF
(n.paskin@doi.org)

Cheers

Daniel


-----Original Message-----
From: W. Eliot Kimber [mailto:eliot@isogen.com]
Sent: 05 September 2002 22:06
To: topicmapmail
Subject: [topicmapmail] Document Object Identifiers/CrossRef


I'm wondering if anyone else is aware of the Document Object Identifier
mechanism (www.doi.org) or the companion CrossRef service. I ran across
this in doing some research for a new customer that does scientific
journal publishing. It has been driven by the scientific and journal
publishing industry (for example, IEEE is a founding member).

The DOI mechanism is essentially SGML public identifiers implemented as
a persistent, Web-accessible resolution service. It's not literally SGML
public identifiers, but it does everything public IDs were intended to
do.

The DOI mechanism is a standard (haven't figured out under exactly what
authority, but I think ANSI or NIST), coupled with a number of
registration authorities.

The CrossRef service is an implementation of the DOI mechanism that
enables lookup and resolution of DOIs to URLs or other specific
identifiers. Owners of individual DOIs are responsible for maintaining
the mapping from DOIs to resources within the CrossRef service. The
CrossRef service is a for-cost service but is largely funded by its
members.

That fact that this system works could have some interesting
implications for topic map deployment and implementation.

I'm surprised that I'd never heard of it before because it appears to be
doing (or at least intends to be doing) what I've been talking about for
years.

Cheers,

E.
--=20
W. Eliot Kimber, eliot@isogen.com
Consultant, ISOGEN International

1016 La Posada Dr., Suite 240
Austin, TX  78752 Phone: 512.656.4139
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