Authors: Sarala Wimalaratne, Henning Hermjakob, and Jo McEntyre
Institution: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire UK.
Abstract: The Identifiers.org system uses Compact Identifiers to consistently support resolution of identifiers based on different systems such as URI, CURIE, DOI, ARK, ORCID, ISSN etc. Compact Identifiers consist of a unique prefix indicating the assigning authority and a locally assigned accession number (prefix:accession). They have been widely used for life sciences data for many years with great success. We have recently formalised Compact Identifiers to enable resolution support beyond the biomedical domain.
The Compact Identifiers are derived using information that is stored in an underlying Registry, which contains high quality, manually curated information on over 600 data collections. To support resolution of Compact Identifiers, a variety of information is stored in the Registry, which includes a unique prefix, a description of the data collection, identifier pattern, a list of hosting resources or resolving locations. When a Compact Identifier is presented to the Identifiers.org Resolver, it is redirected to a resource provider, taking into consideration information such as the uptime and reliability of all available hosting resources. For example, pdb:2gc4, GO:0006915, doi:10.1101/101279, orcid:0000-0002-5355-2576 etc. In addition, we have formally agreed with N2T resolver, based in California Digital Library to share a common prefix registry. This enable users to resolve Compact Identifiers using Identifiers.org (https://identifiers.org) or N2T (https://n2t.net/) resolvers. As Compact Identifiers and the resolving mechanisms of identifiers.org are generic, identifiers.org aligns well with other identifier systems and emerging requirements in the PID ecosystem.
