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The DOI System

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Re: The DOI System

#31

Post by afandian »

natch wrote: post #29
afandian wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why the display guidelines stipulate that DOIs are always expressed as URLs.

Sure, but 10.1083 is still a shitty link compared to nature.com, independent of which url prefix is used.

There are different timescales involved.

The resolvability of a DOI is obviously important, and you have found a few examples where the steward of the content (ie publisher) hasn’t updated the links. But in that case DOIs can in theory be redirected to archived versions. That's the price you pay for a large, diverse community of publishers. Don't imagine that publishers would magically be any better at fixing their own websites.

But more broadly, as identifiers, having an agreed scheme helps link publications, datasets, other entities such as funders and institutions. It allows discovery of metadata in a way that’s discoverable by all.

Someone will want to follow those links in 100 years and whatever state DNS or WWW is in, the metadata will be in an open archive somewhere.

(I'm at Crossref, AMA)

Re: The DOI System

#32

Post by eesmith »

natch wrote: post #22

Visit their old demo pages from early on (5 years into their existence though, after they had time to work out the kinks) where they had examples of DOI links that supposedly will never break: https://web.archive.org/web/20050305141724/http://www.doi.or... Don’t just follow the links as they are on archive.org, because that wraps the links and you get an almost comical series of ultimately unsuccessful redirects (unl…

> examples of DOI links that supposedly will never break

I looked in the FAQ and related materials from that 2005 mirror, and didn't see where they said the links would never break. Did they promise to archive every resolvable DOI in case a registration agency should go out of business or stop being a registration agency?

FWIW, here's what I found:

doi:10.1038/35057062 - works

doi:10.1002/0470841559.ch1 - works

doi:10.1228/0103000001002 - does not work. Neither DDG nor Google Scholar know of the whitepaper "Secure Internet Delivery of High Value Content". The source organization, "Lon Inc." does not seem to exist, or at least, http://loninc.com/ does not resolve.

doi:10.1228/0103000001009 - does not resolve. Also from "Lon Inc."

doi:10.1430/8105 - resolves to https://www.medra.org/servlet/MREngine?hdl=10.1430/8105 resolving in turn to https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1430/8105 .

doi:10.1392/BC1.0 - works

doi:10.1786/SIBQK6AD8RNA - does not work. The corresponding document appears to be https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/4/section/4 , with no associated doi.

The other four DOIs from The Stationery Office UK Official Publications Catalog also do not resolve.

While I can find the press release notice when TSO applied DOIs to UKOP (at http://www.doi.org/news/TSO-UKOPPressRelease.pdf ), I cannot find why they decided to no longer use or support DOIs.

It looks like one registration agency went out of business and another stopped supporting DOIs.

What should DOI have done to improve things to your satisfaction?

Sci-Hub works well with DOIs, and without festooned notices and the like. ;)

Re: The DOI System

#33

Post by watersb »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23
natch wrote: post #17

I’ve never understood this as anything other than an oddly secretive power and money grab by some entrenched stakeholders in publishing and document delivery. They seem to have non-guessable, non-hierarchy-revealing URLs that must be resolved using a database they control. It strikes me as a showcase of ways to try to get around web standards to make things locked down. Last time I looked at this (with horror, not wi…

I dunno, looks similar to the ISBN system for books.

ISBN = International Standard Book Number

DOI does resemble ISBN, but I can find book info via ISBN without relying on the publisher to maintain a database.

(via Google or ISBN.nu or maybe even the Library of Congress)

ISBN is indeed assigned by the publisher, who has been granted an ISBN prefix by the ISBN Fairy. That's same as DOI.

But DOI feels more like Amazon's book numbering system, their ASIN. That relies on an opaque entity which may well lose track of any particular item, for their own reasons... though ASIN has not been promoted as a standard index.

Re: The DOI System

#34

Post by watersb »

watersb wrote: post #33
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, looks similar to the ISBN system for books.

ISBN = International Standard Book Number DOI does resemble ISBN, but I can find book info via ISBN without relying on the publisher to maintain a database. (via Google or ISBN.nu or maybe even the Library of Congress) ISBN is indeed assigned by the publisher, who has been granted an ISBN prefix by the ISBN Fairy. That's same as DOI. But DOI feels more like Amazon's book numbering system, their ASIN. That relies on a…

Here's a really old ISBN, which I picked at random because I wrote the book (often also a random process at times) -- almost 25 years ago:

978-0782120813

I had no trouble finding the book via this magic number. I don't know how that compares to a 25 year old DOI for an item that was in limited publication.

(shameless plug, fair, but it's an example for which I happen to know the provenance of the isbn, even before publication, and I also have an idea at how obscure this item turned out to be after public distribution.)

Re: The DOI System

#35

Post by teorema »

natch wrote: post #29
afandian wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why the display guidelines stipulate that DOIs are always expressed as URLs.

Sure, but 10.1083 is still a shitty link compared to nature.com, independent of which url prefix is used.

Journals, even prominent ones, change names for all sorts of reasons. It doesn't happen often but it does happen. The meaningfulness issue can cut both ways.

I think the real problem is the centralized vs federated vs distributed nature of it. IPFS is a good example of how that could have looked; not sure if it could be moved into that space somehow (I'm sure it could in theory, but in practice?)

Re: The DOI System

#36

Post by teorema »

eesmith wrote: post #8
jiggunjer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think DOI is essentially a URI schema. I don't think there is a technical reason preventing them from being distributed like IPFS, in fact the underlying resources are distributed it's just the URL lookup that is centralized.

Yes, it is a URI schema. FAQ #11, at https://www.doi.org/faq.html > DOI & URI: how does the DOI system work with web URI technologies? > DOI names may be expressed as URLs (URIs) through a HTTP proxy server. In addition, DOI is a registered URI within the info-URI namespace (IETF RFC 4452, the "info" URI Scheme for Information Assets with Identifiers in Public Namespaces). See the DOI Handbook, 2 Numbering and 3 Reso…

re: mutability you just have the standard be that the document being linked to is a sort of wrapper to the actual one. My guess is this is really what's going on with doi anyway.

But you're correct that the mutability issue is sort of a tricky one.

There's this from IPFS about mutability:

https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/file-systems/#mutable-file-sys...

Re: The DOI System

#37

Post by jamessb »

eesmith wrote: post #8
jiggunjer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think DOI is essentially a URI schema. I don't think there is a technical reason preventing them from being distributed like IPFS, in fact the underlying resources are distributed it's just the URL lookup that is centralized.

Yes, it is a URI schema. FAQ #11, at https://www.doi.org/faq.html > DOI & URI: how does the DOI system work with web URI technologies? > DOI names may be expressed as URLs (URIs) through a HTTP proxy server. In addition, DOI is a registered URI within the info-URI namespace (IETF RFC 4452, the "info" URI Scheme for Information Assets with Identifiers in Public Namespaces). See the DOI Handbook, 2 Numbering and 3 Reso…

> The original paper is no longer accessible. (An alternative is to add the equivalent of a big red stamp on it saying "RETRACTED" while leaving the content accessible.)

I think you are slightly confused - the "alternative" that you describe is actually what happened in this case (and in all the cases of retracted papers that I've encountered).

A Retraction Notice has been published at a separate publication [1] with its own DOI, and it cites the original paper [2].

The original paper [2] has been updated to indicate that it has been retracted. In the HTML version, there is an orange banner saying "This article has been retracted". In the PDF version [3] there is a red header, and the retraction notice has been appended as an extra page.

But you are correct that it is important to be able to update PDFs if a significant mistake (or deliberate fraud) is identified.

[1]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.abn0168

[2]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.aag1064

[3]: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/scisignal.aag1064

Re: The DOI System

#39

Post by afandian »

watersb wrote: post #33
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, looks similar to the ISBN system for books.

ISBN = International Standard Book Number DOI does resemble ISBN, but I can find book info via ISBN without relying on the publisher to maintain a database. (via Google or ISBN.nu or maybe even the Library of Congress) ISBN is indeed assigned by the publisher, who has been granted an ISBN prefix by the ISBN Fairy. That's same as DOI. But DOI feels more like Amazon's book numbering system, their ASIN. That relies on a…

Open metadata records dump: https://www.crossref.org/blog/new-public-data-file-120-milli...

DOI Content Negotiation to retrieve metadata in a way that's interoperable between DOI registration agencies: https://citation.crosscite.org/docs.html

Crossref is expressly not opaque. Although we have a legacy codebase, we've committed to fully open source and open data.

https://www.crossref.org/blog/crossrefs-board-votes-to-adopt...

(Disclaimer - I'm at Crossref)

Re: The DOI System

#40

Post by tmalsburg2 »

natch wrote: post #17

I’ve never understood this as anything other than an oddly secretive power and money grab by some entrenched stakeholders in publishing and document delivery. They seem to have non-guessable, non-hierarchy-revealing URLs that must be resolved using a database they control. It strikes me as a showcase of ways to try to get around web standards to make things locked down. Last time I looked at this (with horror, not wi…

DOIs are not URLs though. They are identifiers, as the name suggests. I don't think URLs were ever intended to be identifiers. At least that's not how they are used, as can be seen from the fact that there is a many-to-many relationship between URLs and pieces of content. Identifiers for published pieces that are independent from where that piece is currently published are useful. Just one example: An article can be published in many places and in many different formats (HTML, print, PDF, ...). The DOI allows us to establish that all these instantiations represent the same publication. You might say that we could use titles instead but these are not unique. We also can't use title + authors because authors change their names. And so on. DOIs therefore address a real need. That's why they've become so successful and omnipresent in academic publishing.
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