Identification

Title

Identifiers for earth science data sets: Where we have been and where we need to go

Abstract

Considerable attention has been devoted to the use of persistent identifiers for assets of interest to scientific and other communities alike over the last two decades. Among persistent identifiers, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) stand out quite prominently, with approximately 133 million DOIs assigned to various objects as of February 2017. While the assignment of DOIs to objects such as scientific publications has been in place for many years, their assignment to Earth science data sets is more recent. Applying persistent identifiers to data sets enables improved tracking of their use and reuse, facilitates the crediting of data producers, and aids reproducibility through associating research with the exact data set(s) used. Maintaining provenance – i.e., tracing back lineage of significant scientific conclusions to the entities (data sets, algorithms, instruments, satellites, etc.) that lead to the conclusions, would be prohibitive without persistent identifiers. This paper provides a brief background on the use of persistent identifiers in general within the US, and DOIs more specifically. We examine their recent use for Earth science data sets, and outline successes and some remaining challenges. Among the challenges, for example, is the ability to conveniently and consistently obtain data citation statistics using the DOIs assigned by organizations that manage data sets.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7ns101s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact