IGSN ID Implementation Exemplars: SESAR

Through the partnership between DataCite and IGSN e.V., DataCite services can be used to register International Generic Sample Numbers (IGSN IDs) for material samples. The blog series 'IGSN ID Implementation Exemplars' showcases sample management workflows developed by the community that incorporate IGSN ID registration. In each post, we offer practical guidance on how to work alongside disciplinary sample experts to register IGSN IDs within DataCite services.

In 2004, SESAR  (the System for Earth and Extraterrestrial Sample Registration) was the birthplace of the International Geo-Sample Number, the predecessor to the IGSN ID persistent identifier, was a founding member of the IGSN e.V. in 2011, and was heavily involved in the formation of the partnership with DataCite in 2021, whereby the IGSN PID infrastructure transitioned to become a  DataCite service. As a result, SESAR has a long experience of registering IGSN IDs for diverse stakeholders and communities and, to date, it has assigned over 5,300,000 IGSN IDs to material samples for its global user community. SESAR is hosted at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. 

In addition to using the DataCite infrastructure to make IGSN IDs globally discoverable, SESAR has been a DataCite Registered Service Provider since June 2025, offering its IGSN ID sample registration services and expertise to DataCite Members and Consortium Organizations, as well as to individual researchers from around the globe. Here, we outline the expertise and services that SESAR has available for organizations within the DataCite membership that are keen to offer IGSN ID registration for material samples to their community but do not have the capacity to set up the necessary sample workflows.

IGSN IDs for All: Supporting Large Sample Repositories and Individual Researchers Alike 

For over 20 years, SESAR has supported the Earth sciences by making sample metadata findable, accessible, and interoperable, thus ensuring valuable scientific samples are well-documented and as reusable as possible. Extraterrestrial samples are now being added to SESAR's services.

For organizations such as DataCite Members and Consortium Organizations that have large sample collections or sample repositories, you may already use your own, separate collections management software. What SESAR provides you with is standardized templates and API services for ingesting your sample metadata, registering IGSN IDs with DataCite, and creating sample-specific landing pages on your behalf.

In addition, SESAR has a centralized and community-recognized sample discovery portal that makes sample collections findable by a broader global community (Fig. 1). Organizations that use SESAR do not have to make costly investments in developing and maintaining their own sample registration workflows or their own bespoke public search interfaces. They can instead use SESAR's sample metadata curation expertise and point to SESAR for collection search.

If you have only a few individual researchers within your community that work with samples, they can use  SESAR services that assist them with their sample management. SESAR's "MySESAR" sample management system provides an authenticated workspace for managing, organizing, and formally archiving sample metadata. In MySESAR, users can create a personal sample catalog and link samples to related research products such as datasets, field notebooks, and publications (Fig. 2). 

SESAR can thus help DataCite Members and Consortium Organizations — and their researchers — to not only ensure that sample metadata is of high-quality and complete, but also increase the visibility of the samples as research outputs. In this way, the core purpose of the IGSN ID is fulfilled, "to enable transparent and traceable connections between research activities and objects, including samples, collections, instruments, grants, data, publications, people, and organizations."

Working Towards a Global Sample Discovery Infrastructure with the Internet of Samples (iSamples)

While using SESAR's sample discovery portal increases the findability of your samples collection by the global community, it is only one of a number of DataCite Members that register IGSN IDs for material samples. Searching for samples across these different organizations is not only a significant challenge, given varied descriptive metadata schemas and vocabularies, but also an important one to solve in order to enhance the discoverability of global material sample collections. 

Towards the above end, SESAR is completing a five-year migration to a new metadata schema and a set of common controlled vocabularies as part of the Internet of Samples (iSamples) project. The iSamples project, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has worked to create a scalable, global cyberinfrastructure to enable a unified, centralized search of a wide variety of scientific samples via adoption of a common, interdisciplinary schema. SESAR participated as an early adopter of this model for global interoperability, alongside Open Context, GEOME, and the Smithsonian Institution (Fig. 3).

Building a Field-to-Archive Sample Metadata Pipeline with StraboSpot

SESAR is making it even easier for individual researchers within your community to capture sample metadata and to share it with SESAR for the purpose of IGSN ID registration. It has recently partnered with StraboSpot, a next-generation network of interconnected applications that facilitate the collection, management, and sharing of field and laboratory data.

As of July 2025, users of StraboField, a mobile app designed for in-field data collection, can archive sample metadata and register samples with IGSN IDs through SESAR from directly within the StraboField app, using metadata they have already collected about the sample (Fig. 4). This combines and streamlines the processes of field data collection and sample metadata archival: when researchers return from the field, their samples already have a persistent IGSN ID, their sample metadata is already archived securely, and users can visit SESAR to print QR codes for physical storage and register "child" IGSN IDs as they process and analyze their samples (Fig. 5). 

Future support for IGSN ID registration and metadata archival in StraboMicro, a desktop application focused on data collection at the microstructural levels, is in progress. This work was funded as part of the Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance (IEDA), a collaborative data facility, by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Looking Forward: Supporting Community-driven Metadata Profiles and Curation

SESAR is taking steps to ensure that it can continue supporting the sample community for another twenty years. SESAR has conducted extensive user research to modernize and streamline its web interfaces, overhauling MySESAR, simplifying data submission, and improving sample search (Fig. 6). In the near future, SESAR will build tools to support community-driven curation.

SESAR's recent designation as a DataCite Registered Service Provider enables it to better support organizations who are already members of DataCite, enabling them to take advantage of the specialized infrastructure and services SESAR offers for samples. Having recently celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024, SESAR is looking to the future needs of the global scientific sample community—and ensuring it remains sustainable for the next 20 years of service and beyond.
If your organization is interested in registering IGSN IDs and would like to learn more about how DataCite and SESAR can support your sample management workflows, we encourage you to reach out to us at support@datacite.org. Our team is happy to discuss your needs and guide you through the next steps.