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Introduction

As more and more material is made available on the Web, the issue of persistent identification of resources has become a pressing concern. For more than a decade content providers have had some freedom to choose between several mechanisms for providing persistent identifiers (PIDs). A useful introduction to the various schemes ad some of the generic issues in this space is Emma Tonkin's Aridane article, Persistent Identifiers: Considering the Options.

An issue which has frequently surfaced in discussions around PIDs is that of the taking of fairly polarised positions on the use of different schemes. The recent JISC consultation on identifiers 2010 was an important milestone in ongoing work to define the rationale for the selection of various persistent identifier schemes for particular purposes. This workshop was underpinned by several years of JISC-funded investigation, notably from the RIDIR project. One particular output which should be invaluable in helping to approach a rational selection of persistent identification scheme is the set of Candidate Statements of Common Agreement. These are reproduced here:

Statements of Common Agreement

1. We accept that we are dealing with heterogeneous identifier environments.
2. Well-defined contexts may have their own schemes. Where dominant schemes are used in a particular context (eg DOI) then we should encourage their ubiquity.
3. Where there are not dominant schemes, then we would encourage the adoption of HTTP URIs
4. We want to ensure that actionable HTTP URI manifestations are available of any non-native HTTP URI identifiers. We want agreed and consistent ways of constructing these manifestations. We would expect to be able to build services on the basis of these manifestations.
5. Higher levels of good practice may be possible for native HTTP URIs.