University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

> Cool! @[alaskamuseum](https://twitter.com/alaskamuseum) has DOIs for
> specimens, e.g.
> [dx.doi.org/10.7299/X78052...](http://t.co/YHkMl6hmt5 "http://dx.doi.org/10.7299/X78052RB")
> (minted by @[ezidcdl](https://twitter.com/ezidcdl) )
>
> --- Roderic Page (@rdmpage) [May 22,
> 2013](https://twitter.com/rdmpage/status/337284270605348864)

  
I\'ve been banging on about having citable, persistent identifiers for
specimens, so was suitably impressed when Derek Sikes posted a [comment
on
iPhylo](http://iphylo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-decadal-view-of-biodiversity.html#comment-904886746)
that [Arctos](http://arctos.database.museum/) already does this. For
example, here is a DOI for a specimen:
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7299/X7VQ32SJ>.  
  
![Uam](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-DR3GNpJ5gYk/UZ3cHtCslHI/AAAAAAAACyc/ObXUQzvXLQ8/uam.png?imgmax=800 "uam.png"){style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;"
border="0" width="460" height="358"}  
  
So, we\'re all done, right? Not quite. DOIs by themselves don\'t get us
where we (OK, where I think we) want to be. The DOI identifies a
specimen, which is great (see discussion on [iDigBio: You are putting
identifiers on the wrong
thing](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2013/01/idigbio-you-are-putting-identifiers-on.html)
for why this matters). We can also get machine-readable metadata using
the DOI (by using the URL <http://data.datacite.org/10.7299/X7VQ32SJ> ).
The metadata is limited (ideally we\'d want something like Darwin Core),
but it is a start. It\'s not clear how we get from the DOI to Darwin
Core.  
  
There are at least two issues that remain to be tackled. The first is
that we now have a bunch of identifiers for the same thing, e.g.:  

- <http://dx.doi.org/10.7299/X7VQ32SJ>
- <http://arctos.database.museum/guid/UAM:Ento:230092>
- <http://data.gbif.org/occurrences/773259491/>
- UAM Ento 230092 (GBIF)
- UAM Insects 230092 (Arctos)
- BYU_gb32.1 (see
  [DQ457300](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/DQ457300)

  
Most of these identifiers don\'t know about each other (for example,
GBIF doesn\'t know about the DOI, nor does Arctos link to GBIF). So we
have disconnected pieces of information about the same thing.  
  
The second issue is how do we discover a specimen DOI? CrossRef supports
services where you can take a bibliographic citation, e.g. [Phylogeny
and biogeography of ice crawlers (Insecta: Grylloblattodea) based on six
molecular loci: designating conservation status for Grylloblattodea
species](http://search.crossref.org/?q=Phylogeny+and+biogeography+of+ice+crawlers+%28Insecta%3A+++++++++++++Grylloblattodea%29+based+on+six+molecular+loci%3A+designating+++++++++++++conservation+status+for+Grylloblattodea+species)
and get back a DOI (in this case,
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2006.04.013>). This makes it possible
for publishers to take lists of literature cited in authors\'
manuscripts and quickly add DOIs to those citations. We don\'t have an
equivalent service for specimens, which is going to make our task of
linking specimens to sequences and the literature something of a
challenge.  
  
We are making progress, but there is some way to go. Identifiers are
only part of the solution, we also need services.  


I've been banging on about having citable, persistent identifiers for specimens, so was suitably impressed when Derek Sikes posted a comment on iPhylo that Arctos already does this. For example, here is a DOI for a specimen: http://dx.doi.org/10.7299/X7VQ32SJ. So, we're all done, right? Not quite.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

DOIs for specimens are here, but we're not quite there yet