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- All things eventually pass, including hostnames and the web itself and the "
https://"protocol. When that first part of the identifier ceases to have meaning, only ARKs and URNs will include the label (eg, "ark:") indicating the type of identifier that remains. - For DOIs, Handles, and PURLs, you are required to use their respective resolvers. ARKs and URNs, permit you to use your own resolver.
- To create DOIs and Handles, you are required to pay a membership fee and, for DOIs, per-DOI charges. There are no fees for ARKs, PURLs, and URNs.
- To create Handles, you are required to install and maintain a local Handle server, which gives you another system to monitor, patch, and troubleshoot.
- Although you can use a local or vendor resolver for your ARKs and URNs, ARKs can be resolved via the global n2t.net resolver.
- The envisioned URN resolution infrastructure was never built, so URNs are currently resolved as URLs, and there is no designated global URN-as-URL resolver. In order to register to create URNs, you must apply for a URN namespace.
- Unlike DOIs and Handles, ARKs don't have metadata requirements. ARKs that haven't been released into the world are easy to delete.
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For the purpose of supporting early object development, some distinguishing features of ARKs are that they can be deleted, they can exist with no metadata, and they can exist with any metadata you care to store.
Why are ARK that haven't been "released into the world" easy to delete?
If no one knows about an identifier, there's absolutely no problem in removing it. Identif
This is actually true for many types of identifier. An advertised identifier
What do you mean by ARKs supporting early object development?
We need identifiers long before we know exactly what they refer to, or even if they refer to anything useful. An identifier that requires mature metadata cannot be used during early object development since little is known about the object. So object creators almost always initially assign identifiers that have no metadata requirements, such as URLs or ARKs.
If you start with an ARK, you benefit from being able to keep the original identifier through to public release as the metadata matures. Many objects go through intensive development and revision phases, in which they are too immature to meet most metadata requirements. Nonetheless every object needs some sort of identifier from conception to maturity, where maturity could look like public release and further enhancement, or abandonment. Like the object itself, metadata elements need a flexible place to grow and mature over time:
- starting from the first plans, when it just needs an identifier,
- at the moment of birth, when its first digital representation needs a redirection target URL,
- after the first analysis, when its significance and a tentative title emerges,
- when creating dozens of discipline-specific metadata elements that violate most metadata standards except your own,
- during post-processing by a colleague whose name will be added as a creator,
- when early feedback based on the tweeted identifier turns up a key insight and a new contributor,
- and so forth, through public release, correction, revision, enhancement, etc.
Can an object have both an ARK and a DOI?
Yes. As mentioned, if you start with an ARK early in object development, you benefit from being able to keep that original identifier through to public release as the metadata matures. If in addition you think you need a DOI, that will become a second object identifier to maintain.
Assuming you wish to maintain both the new and old identifiers (to avoid breaking links that your collaborators had stored and bookmarked), an easy way forward is to set up the DOI to redirect to the ARK. In this way you could ensure correct resolution of both identifiers but only having to maintain the ARK.
But isn't presence of metadata a sign of quality?
, and such identifiers probably won't meet requirements. If assigning a certain kind of identifier (eg, a DataCite DOI) means meeting metadata requirements, that almost ensures that the object will become known by another identifier get a new and different identifier from it has been known by for what might be years of development. releasing mean that these objects for meet metadata requirements for publication it is impossible to meet metadata requirements identifier when it's ok not to have basic metadata.
Flexible metadata (object descriptions) is critical for keeping identifiers stable throughout object life cycles. In the digital age, objects often mature in public, where they may be referenced for years in tweets and whitepapers via whatever identifier is easy or possible. Unfortunately, when they are finally ready to enter the scholarly publication system, that is often the first time that metadata requirements can be met to obtain a DOI – in other words, these well-loved objects, at the peak of celebrity, are expected to become known by a new name. The old name might continue to work, but
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