[SEEK-Taxon] a non-technical GUID comment

[Nico Mario Franz]

Hi Dave:

	Two weeks ago I read up on this a bit. Especially various papers by N.
Paskin the DOI director. A now outdated overview is:

Paskin, N. 1999. Towards unique identifiers. Proceedings of the IEEE
87(7): 1208-1227.

	In my view an excellent introduction for newcomers, and well written.
Paskin has a no-nonsense approach to topics ranging from technical
support, content, to economics. The all-round perceptiveness of his
papers ought to have contributed to the success of the DOI system.

	A more recent overview that I haven't gotten around to read yet, is

Paskin, N. 2003. Components of DRM systems. In: E. Becker et al. (eds.):
Digital Rights Management, Springer Verlag, pp. 26-61.

	Googling for DOI etc. one can locate various PDFs and PPTs to get a quick
idea. Apparently there are some myths about "ownership", "fees", etc.
that make the system sound like a for-profit organization which it isn't.
I can email these references if anyone wants them.

	As far as DOI-biol. taxonomy development, I've not seen much involvement
e.g. by the TDWG community. Talking to various people, my guess is that
this is not an accident but a reflection of a conscious position. Then
again, the TDWG community probably thinks more like an information
facilitator, not an author of information.

	A small subgroup within the CODATA council, headed by a German
meteorologist, is "planning" to write a position paper on using DOIs to
label individual content items in a scientific publication (which of
course as a whole already gets a DOI). A request for an update has so far
not been answered. Still, we need to remind ourselves that - acc. to the
Codes - full scientific credit for a new concept is currently only
available if one makes the hurdle of a print publication.

	Meanwhile the people overseeing bacteria taxonomy are going full speed
ahead with the DOI system:
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~jag/wdmbio/garrity.htm Dr. Garrity kindly
informed me that a patented (!) database model for DOI-using bacteria
taxonomy exists, and a more extensive paper on the model is about to be
submitted for publication.

	Speaking for myself, not for the taxonomic community, I would GLADLY pay
various tens or even hundreds of $$ if my set of concepts appeared like
this:

"Anescundia Franz [DOI 10.1080/001230045600789]"
"Holetype female, Costa Rica, USNM [DOI 10.1080/123004560078900]"
etc. (that's partly up to the author in my view)

	- embedded within the text in the actual article. That way it would
almost be trivial what "GUIDs" GBIF, ITIS, SEEK etc. would us (nice try
guys!); my concepts would be uniquely and permanently labelled. The
publisher would presumably (maybe in conjunction with others) support the
Handle System, and I'd pay for that support at the time of agreeing to
let my paper go into press, a process during which the required metadata
are produced. At a first glance, all this sounds right enough to me.

	I could imagine that for someone who understand the history of the
internet well it could seem rather counter-intuitive to pay for an
internet service. Yet to an author of a scientific data set and theory
(concept), things might be different. They already are: I pay to get my
ideas out and archived "for good". Also, as Paskin points out
(convincingly to me), NO lasting service is really free. That business
model doesn't exist.

	I think strategically we all agree that this is in the far(ther) future.
Right now anything that works for US, short-term, is preferable. However,
we should keep an eye on what the DOI system requires in terms of
system/structure compatibility. Can we have a system that works like DOI
but doesn't actually use it? (My guess would be: no).

	My single point: SOMEHOW the DOI system managed to sway the science
publishing community to move towards them. That community has a huge
vested interest in the maintenance of intellectual content. Now there's
already a "perceived persistence" or "trust factor" that other GUID
systems don't seem to have. Databases can appear and disappear
periodically, but authors of intellectual products - taxonomists
generously included - may correctly view this "perceived trust" as a very
strong, non-technical argument. If possible I'd like us to add something
like this as a column to the table of considered systems.

	To be continued,

Nico

Nico M. Franz
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
735 State Street, Suite 300
Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Phone: (805) 966-1677; Fax: (805) 892-2510; E-mail: franz at nceas.ucsb.edu
Website: http://www.cals.cornell.edu/dept/entomology/wheeler/Franz/Nico.html



At 01:07 AM 2/26/2004 -0500, you wrote:

Hi Robert,
Thanks for your comments.  I think I cleared some of the ambiguity up in
this version.

Anyone else?
Dave