DOI Questions & Answers
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General FAQs
How can we be sure Australian DOIs will continue?
What are the costs?
What are the workflows applicable to a DOI?
Keeping track of DOIs
Where should the DOI point?
Who do I contact if something goes wrong?
How can we be sure Australian DOIs will continue?
A: All institutions who mint DOIs with ANDS are automatically registered with DataCite. In the event that ANDS is no longer a Registration Agency with DataCite, the DataCite organization will continue to run its infrastructure and thus the status/availability/accessibility of existing DOIs will continue.
- Previously minted DOIs and the metadata associated with those DOIs will persist though DataCite
- New DOIs:
- Your ability to manage and mint new DOIs will also persist.
- You simply need to find a new minting agency
to create new DOIs and continue to manage your existing DOIs
It is the institution's responsibility to manage any changes or moves of data location to ensure the DOI resolver continues to work.
What are the costs?
Q: What is the cost of minting a DOI?
A: There is no cost to mint DOIs through the ANDS Cite My Data machine-to-machine service for publicly funded Australian research organisations or government agencies that make their data available to the Australian Research Data Commons.
If your data is NOT generated through publicly funded Australian research organisations or government agencies but is still within the scope of DataCite it is possible that one of the other DataCite Registration Agents would be able to help you. For example you might like to inquire about minting DOIs from the California Digital Library
Q: Is there an ongoing maintenance cost?
A: There are no maintenance costs in terms of the DOI. However, there are other associated costs for persistence as part of routine data management. It is the responsibility of the institution to maintain the persistence of the DOI. If the URI changes, it is the responsibility of the data manager to update the URI. If the new URI domain is not registered against the institutions DOI account, contact services@ands.org.au to have the new domain added. More information
What are the workflows applicable to a DOI?
Q: What is the ANDS workflow for registering to mint DOIs?
A: ANDS M-2-M service provides a simple workflow [PDF 739KB] for obtaining a DOI.
Q: Can this process be completely automated, or would human mediation be advisable?
A: Software supporting these workflows will need to be able to access the Cite My Data M-2-M web service and possibly the DataCite MDS system. As dedicated data portals become more widely available (e.g. PANGAEA) local systems may need to inter-operate with those too.
Q: If human, should we have something like a ‘request a DOI' check box for new records of digital objects?
A: Manual workflows may be suitable for small institutions or data holdings, but an automated approach will likely be needed for larger institutions.
Q: Can I see an example of an internal institutional workflow ?
A: Yes - CSIRO has provided their workflow [PDF - 160KB]
Minting workflows will vary widely from data owner to data owner:
- Larger institutions will probably prefer a fully automated system that integrates well with other systems and provides management reporting and auditing
- Manual workflows may be suitable for small institutions or data holdings
Keeping track of DOIs
Q: Is there a way of finding of how many DOIs we have and getting a list of these?
A: Data owners can email services@ands.org.au and ANDS will also discuss requirements for adding more query functions to the Cite My Data service. Data owners can also query the DataCite Metadata Store (MDS) web services directly.
Q: Who should manage DOIs within an institution?
A: Whoever is taking responsibility for controlling access to, and preservation of, the data could be seen as having responsibilities for the ongoing management for the institution's DOIs.
Where should the DOI point?
Q: Should the DOI point to a landing page or to an actual digital object?
A: In general ANDS recommends that:
- ANDS Technical Document 2.3 DOI Resolution [PDF - 731KB] states that "All ANDS DOIs must be associated with a resolvable URL pointing to a landing page for the data being identified. This means that resolving ANDS DOIs is as simple as prefixing the DOI with the DOI System's resolution service address
- A landing page generally contextualises objects and provides at least the following information:
- Preferred citation
- Descriptive metadata
- License information for reuse of the data
- A link to any accompanying paper
- How to access the data
- And perhaps: links to subsets, persistent queries, versions of the same dataset
eg The DOI 10.4225/02/4E9F5DE549B8D resolves to this landing page: http://www.genomics.csse.unimelb.edu.au/GSS/input-genesets.html
Q: What if is there is no landing page?
A: If there is no landing page as described above, in practice, the idea of a resolvable "landing page" for data access covers a wide range of data access mechanisms:
- A human-readable web landing page with links to the data.
- A human-readable web page with instructions for accessing mediated-access datasets.
- A machine-to-machine oriented web service that uses content negotiation between data client and server to customize data formats and access patterns.
- A well known data service end-point (e.g. for an OPeNDAP service) that requires a customized service client
Who do I contact if something goes wrong?
- services@ands.org.au
- Your ANDS Client Liaison Officer
Minting DOIs
What should our DOI minting policy be?
What material should (and shouldn't) have a DOI?
Granularity: dealing with objects vs collections, subsets
Versioning: updated or expanded datasets
DOIs and Research Data Australia (RDA)
How many DOIs can we/should we mint?
How can I get a DOI if my data does not come from a publically funded Australian research organization?
Minting authorities within institutions
Should we store the DOI?
In a research collaboration, who mints the DOI?
How can we be sure only one DOI is minted?
Is it ever appropriate to mint a DOI for data that is not 'yours'? e.g. some input data from a 3rd party such as is common for multi-partner and consortia projects
What happens when the data moves location?
What should our DOI minting policy be?
A: A policy might be applicable when:
- storage of and access to the material will be long-term and managed by the institution.
- the author or primary contributor of the material is a staff member or student.
- the material does not already have a DOI.
Some policies of interest:
- DOI.org Policy on DOIs
- ETH Zurich: Policy for the registration of Digital Object Identifiers
These policies are a good starting point, although the final choice for each data owner will also depend on local factors.
What material should (and shouldn't) have a DOI?
Q: I have data that will never be made public but I want to mint a DOI for it. Is this appropriate?
A: No, this isn't appropriate. DOIs are minted when:
- The data will be exposed to the outside world, possibly through mediated access, and
- The data will be citable and part of the scholarly record and
- The data will be persistent and
- The data will have the metadata required by DataCite
If these conditions are not met, mint another type of identifier such as a Handle ANDS offers 2 identifier services for datasets:
- Identify My Data: a persistent identifier service which provides a way to automatically assign globally unique citable identifiers, based on Handle technology, to an individual's datasets, collections, papers and so on.
- Cite My Data: a machine-to-machine service which allows research organisations to assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to research datasets or collections.
See: The ANDS Identifier Decision Tree can help you decide which datasets should have a DOI.
Granularity: dealing with objects vs collections, subsets
Q: For large and diverse collections where only a subset of the data will be used by a researcher, is DOI use pertinent at this level?
A: This is a generic issue for hierarchically structured datasets. The decision to apply DOIs at collection or item level needs to reflect the needs of the communities involved, what they want and how they will use the data. It's a bit like citing a book vs. pages in a book.
For specific subsets and queries against large databases, it is probably best to have a DOI that binds to a temporal/spatial query against the database. The DOI should resolve to the result of this query and not to a "live" query so that the DOI resolves to the same dataset on each access.
Q: What about DOIs for each digital object within a collection (i.e. item level records)?
A: Firstly consider the data users: would they expect to use (and thus cite) the data at collection or item level? An institution might consider citing at multiple levels:
- Parent collection DOI
- Data item DOIs
Collections are intrinsically more citable than items, and collections can impose indexing on items to retrieve them.
Versioning: updated or expanded datasets
Q: Where a dataset which has already got a DOI, is updated or expanded (or changed in any way), should a new DOI be issued for the updated/expanded dataset?
A: Yes -- many datasets will change in version, scope and content over time so it's important to have a strategy for dealing with change. In most cases the data owner will want to issue a new DOI for the changed dataset.
DOI.org recommends "As a general rule, if the change is substantial and/or it is necessary to identify both the original and the changed material, assign a new DOI name." http://www.doi.org/faq.html
Q: If a new DOI is minted for an updated / changed dataset, how do you refer to the "old" dataset in the metadata record?
A: If a new DOI is minted for a changed dataset (recommended) it is suggested that the metadata ‘RelatedIdentifier‘ (and other metadata as needed) be used to refer to the previous versions of the dataset.
Q: If ANY content changes occur, should another DOI be minted for the new version? (or can versions be attached to a DOI)?
A: This will depend on how the end-users of the data expect to access and use it:
- If the change is small, an option is to issue a set of changes to the original data and link this to the original DOI.
- For large datasets that are changing regularly, then you probably need to mint new DOIs for each regular update.
Q: If software is updated, would another DOI be appropriate?
A: This is a similar question about versioning: new DOIs should be minted for software or software services as they change versions.
DOIs and Research Data Australia (RDA)
Q: Would we want DOIs for all collection records we send to RDA?
A: A DOI assumes:
- The data will be exposed to the outside world, possibly through mediated access, and
- The data will be citable and part of the scholarly record and
- The data will be persistent and
- The data will have the metadata required by DataCite
Most collections within Research Data Australia would be able to meet these criteria. The Identifier Decision Tree could help in deciding which datasets might benefit from DOIs or which ones simply need a Handle.
Q: What about DOIs for digital objects that are not in RDA but are in our repository (e.g. theses, reports)?
A: There is an already well established infrastructure for assigning DOIs to publications like theses and reports (e.g. Crossref). For other data objects you should be able to use Cite My Data to mint DOI's provided the citeable item meets the 4 requirements described above.
Q: How many DOIs can we/should we mint?
A: DOIs for Australian Research Institutions are free to mint through the ANDS Cite My Data service and are effectively infinite. The number to mint will depend on the ability of the institution to keep all datasets with a DOI persistently available and whether the data meets the criteria for DOIs - more information>>
Q: How can I get a DOI if my data does not come from a publically funded Australian research organization?
A: The Australian National Data Service provides a DOI minting service for publicly funded Australian research organisations. We are funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Innovation to provide basic infrastructure for research data, and we make available a machine-to-machine interface so that data archive systems can mint DOIs (industrial-level).
If your data is NOT generated through publicly funded Australian research organisations or government agencies but is still within the scope of DataCite it is possible that one of the other DataCite Registration Agents would be able to help you. For example you might like to inquire about minting DOIs from the California Digital Library
Minting authorities within institutions
Q: Is one, and only one, DOI minting service envisaged per institution, or would it be OK for a Centre/Department etc to also host their own minting service?
A: In general, ANDS would favour a single minting point per institution from an operational point of view, but some institutions might be relaxed about more than one minting service. Considerations:
- It is possible for an institution to have:
- multiple data publishers (eg institutional repositories, discipline based repositories etc) all using a single DOI minting service
- multiple DOI minting services registered with ANDS
- In general, centres/departments and repository managers will need to talk to their institutions about whether the institution wants single or multiple minting points. In order to mint DOIs through ANDS, someone in the institution has to sign the ANDS documentation. Single or multiple minters per institution could be discussed at this point.
Should we store the DOI?
Q: The DOIs will display in our collection records in Research Data Australia, but should we also store the DOI in our systems?
A: Storing locally is a decision data owners will need to make based on local factors but the DOI needs to be integrated into your data management, otherwise you will keep using fragile URIs to refer to it instead. The DOI once minted is also stored in RDA at ANDS and also in the global DataCite and DOI infrastructure.
Q: If ‘yes', where to store? In our repository or our metadata store (Research Hub)? Or both?
A: Both - for different reasons. The Metadata Store becomes a system of record for referencing data from the outside world; repository is where the fragile URI is mediated by the persistent identifier.
Q: If ‘yes' should we display as well as store the DOI?
A: Yes - as this encourages citation using the DOI rather than the URI.
Q: In a research collaboration, who mints the DOI?
A: There are no hard and fast rules for these kinds of arrangements--it may be easiest to have a prior agreement on who mints the DOI, similar to arrangements which institutions might have for who is lead author on a publication or who submits a publication.
Q: How can we be sure only one DOI is minted?
A: To ensure that only one is minted it is best to have agreement between the collaborating institutions as to which one will be responsible for minting the DOI.
Q: Is it ever appropriate to mint a DOI for data that is not 'yours'? e.g. some input data from a 3rd party such as is common for multi-partner and consortia projects.
- No: whoever is managing the data coming from a research collaboration should mint the DOI
- Yes: if you are producing a derived product from the data which results in a new, or substantially altered dataset.
Why are ANDS DOIs only opaque and random (eg 10.4225/02/4E9F5DE549B8D), rather than branded (eg) doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.604014) or sequenced (eg http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-4093-1 where SN refers to Study Number for a sequence of longitudinal studies)?
A: Whilst readable DOIs are possible, and are used by other agencies, ANDS only offers opaque and random DOI numbers. These are considered best practice, are the most persistent and sustainable with minimal maintenance.
If organisational branding is included and the name of the organisation changes, there will be substantial effort involved in taking down and reminting DOIs with the new branding. Similarly, use of sequenced numbers may be difficult to maintain into the future because specific numbers will need to be requested for specific datasets.
DOI.org reminds users that:
- DOIs are case insensitive and that "A DOI name and its referent are unaffected by changes in the rights associated with the referent, or changes in the management responsibility of the referent." (2.3.6 Persistence)
- "In use, the DOI name is an "opaque string" or "dumb number" - nothing at all can or should be inferred from the number in respect of its use in the DOI system. The only secure way of knowing anything about the entity that a particular DOI name identifies is by looking at the metadata that the Registrant of the DOI name declares at the time of registration. This means, for example, that even when the ownership of a particular item changes, its identifier remains the same - in perpetuity. This is why the DOI name is called a "persistent identifier"." (2.2 Syntax of a DOI Name)
However, please contact services@ands.org.au if your organisation has a strong case for customised DOIs.
What happens to the DOI when the data moves from one server to another? (i.e. the resolving url changes)
A: A new DOI should not be minted if only the URL is changing. The Cite My Data technical document has instruction about updating a DOI metadata: section 3.9.2 Update a DOI
Metadata
Metadata for data citation
Who should be the "Publisher" for a DOI?
Metadata for data citation
Q: Where can I find information about metadata to ensure good citation records?
A: The Citation of Datasets and Collections page in the ANDS Content Provides Guide contains explanation, information and examples of:
- citationMetadata
- CitationMetadata Identifier Type
- CitationMetadata Date Type
- RIF-CS citation fields
Q: ANDS RIF-CS metadata elements don't match with DataCite ‘s mandatory metadata elements - what is being done about this?
A: The major upgrade of RIF-CS takes place in November each year. Planning for the update can be found on the ANDS Community Bulletin Board.
Who should be the "Publisher" for a DOI?
Q: Does/should the Publisher in the citation metadata for the DOI = the Group in RDA Data Source?
A: The ANDS Content Providers Guide recommends Institution as Group - more information>>
Q: For collections/services developed by a multi-institution consortium, who is the publisher (i.e. that will appear in the citation)? Is it:
- whoever owns the resource for a service?
- whoever owns the data collection?
A: If the Publisher is different to the Group then reflect this in the Citation.Publisher field. Contact services@ands.org.au for further advice as some institutions may have specific use cases.
Some possible scenarios:
- Match the data citation fields to any print/publication citations arising from these kinds of consortia/collaborations
- It may also be possible to distinguish between Publisher role in citation and Creator role.
- It is also possible to use optional DataCite metadata to reflect finer distinctions.
Q: Why isn't ANDS the publisher instead of each and every Institution?
A: ANDS does not create, own, manage or store data and therefore is not a publisher. In most cases the publisher is the group or institution responsible for managing the data.
Q: If the publisher is whoever has the responsibility for storage of the data, what if data is stored on the cloud?
A: It doesn't matter where the data is stored, it is the group or institution who manages the data who should be listed as the publisher.
Q: What about digital objects we hold that already have a publisher-issued DOI? Should we mint one as well because it will point to our landing page and not the publisher's landing page?
A: DOI.org states that "It is the intention that wherever practical only one DOI name should be assigned to a specified entity." FAQ#46 gives examples and warnings of where multiple DOIs may be issued for the one object.
Do not mint DOIs for the sake of getting a different landing page. This violates the point of persistent identifiers, which are meant to be at FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) Manifestation rather than FRBR Item level. Instead, look closely at Open URL, which is how the publishing industry already addresses resolution of DOIs to multiple locations. Data owners could also use the optional metadata to build references to other DOIs forming part of a collection or dataset changing in time.
More information:
ANDS Cite my data service: requirements, profile, cost, register, contacts, technical documentation, more>>
Data citation resources: benefits, identifiers, DOIs, ANDS services and projects, implementing DOIs, presentations and training material, more>>
If you have other questions about DOIs that are not answered here or on other ANDS pages (Cite My Data, Data Citation Resources) please email: contacts@ands.org.au
