...
On the internet, an identifier is a URL, or part of a URL. For example, this core basic ARK identifier,
is carried below inside part of two different URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, or web addresses):
...
The average lifetime of a URL has been said to be 44 days. The lifetime the period after which you can expect a typical published URL to At the end of its life, a published URL will give you the well-known and dreaded 404 Not Found error. Irritating As irritating as that can beis for most of us, it's a disaster for libraries, archives, museums, and other memory organizations. They want want to publish persistent identifiers, that which should continue to work far into the future.
...
Those are all major kinds of persistent identifier solutions that appeared between 1994 (Handles) and 2001 (ARKs)identifiers. The short answer : is that ARKs are the the only mainstream, non-siloed, non-paywalled, actionable identifiers. There are over Over 500 registered organizations have created an estimated 3.2 billion ARKs in the world, and no one ever paid for the right to create or use them.
...
Would you be able to expand that answer?
Superficially, these identifiers all have similar structure and purpose.
xxxxx
What about ORCIDs and UUIDs – where do they fit in?
ORCIDs are specifically designed to Those are special kinds of persistent identifiers. ORCIDs identify researchers, and they often link to research works using the other persistent identifiers. ARKs, DOIs, etc. ORCIDs look like
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-8041
UUIDs are globally unique strings , 37-character strings that are very easy to create but that don't generate but only become usable as web addresses until you put them inside a URL; that people often carry around inside URLs, or inside any of the above identifiers; they're great because they're easy to create, but you need to choose a way to carrywhen made part of a URL, ARK, DOI, etc. They look like
xxxx