[tdwg-tag] Are DOIs expensive?

"Markus Döring (GBIF)" mdoering at gbif.org
Tue Nov 25 20:06:49 CET 2008 

well, in a second mail I've asked TIB about assigning 1 billion DOIs  
and they actually propose a mix of handles and DOIs because of the  
cost involved:

"Well, a billion is of course a lot.
There is furthermore always the cost issue. There are some costs  
involved when signing DOI names. We try to keep them as low as  
possible and sometimes are able to cover them all by ourselves, but  
even if we speak of half a cent, or less, it adds up when a billion  
identifiers are needed.
One way to deal with this is for example, to use a combination of DOI  
and handle, as they are technically the same. If you for example  
assign handles to a billion records with on prefix, then the one  
billion handles would cost you 50 Dollars annually. But as handles are  
not ideal for citing, as they have no quality assurance, standard and  
trademark as DOI names, you can change all the handles to DOI names,  
if you need them to be cited officially. (This technically is just a  
change of the prefix more or less), so we might end with a number of  
say 1 million actual DOI names.  Which would cost you some thousand  
Euro. And only once, not annually. But all this needs to be discussed  
in detail, of course."


Markus




On Nov 25, 2008, at 17:19, Markus Döring (GBIF) wrote:

> I took the liberty and contacted TIB about this.
> It seems there is no problem using their infrastructure for large  
> amounts of biodiversity records. Here's the body of the reply:
>
> "The requirements for data providers are more or less the ability to  
> store and maintain the data and provide metadata to it.
> They do not need to be European institutions, but should work on a  
> non-commercial basis.
> Ideally for millions ob objects more than one prefix is advisable,  
> but technically one prefix can be used for an unlimited number of  
> DOI names.
> In my opinion the use of DOI names would fit very well for  
> biodiversity information, I am looking forward to discuss these  
> issues with you further."
>
> From what I have seen they assign a DOI to a whole dataset so far.
> But as it makes sense to cite a single specimen in biological  
> articles, I dont think they would mind.
>
> Markus
>
> PS:
> Anyone heard of Names For Life before? Seems they (plan to) use DOIs  
> for scientific (prokaryotic) names.
> http://names4life.com/
>
>
>
> On Nov 25, 2008, at 12:50, Roger Hyam wrote:
>
>> My thought is that the German TIB does not expect 'publishers' to  
>> have millions of digital assets. There is an issue with the  
>> granularity of our data compared with that of the publishing  
>> industry that would call for a different business model for a  
>> central register.
>>
>> What happens if the maintenance fee is not paid? Do the identifiers  
>> cease to be permanent? There are many things in life that are  
>> permanent if you keep paying the bills our problem is paying the  
>> bills.
>>
>> <half-joke>
>> As a community we could run a central register for GUIDs. I'm  
>> currently free next year and would set one up but some one else  
>> would have to find the money to pay for me (and my successors/ 
>> assistances) and the infrastructure .... indefinitely. The whole  
>> thing would have a significant set up cost and an on-going  
>> maintenance cost. It could be tuned to our needs and run at a much  
>> cheaper cost than DOIs but it would still cost real cash money. An  
>> endowment of say $10m (a secure income of $100k/year at current  
>> base rates) would secure the thing as a viable project provided we  
>> still got input from larger institutions on an ongoing basis.
>> </half-joke>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>>
>> On 25 Nov 2008, at 10:59, Markus Döring (GBIF) wrote:
>>
>>> That is very interesting, Gregor. Apparently it is up to the  
>>> registration agency on how much they charge (and not the central  
>>> DOI). There are currently 8 agencies for different areas with the  
>>> German TIB issuing DOI prefixes for "registration of scientific  
>>> primary and secondary data" at the cost of 250€ per prefix (which  
>>> allows you to create as many DOIs as you like).
>>>
>>> http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/registration_agencies.html#8.2
>>> http://www.doi.org/registration_agencies.html
>>>
>>> It would also be possible to setup a new registration agency for  
>>> biodiversity data if we feel this is more suited to our needs.  
>>> There are several costs associated with this though, an annual  
>>> membership fee ($35.000), a "franchise fee" for each newly  
>>> registered name ($0.04/doi) and a maintenance fee ($0.005/doi). So  
>>> this is clearly much more expensive and would be around 9 million  
>>> dollars each year for 200 million occurrence records in GBIF.
>>> http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/registration_agencies.html#8.8
>>>
>>> So I guess this is what was investigated before and which is far  
>>> too expensive. But it should be worth consulting the TIB registry,  
>>> 250€ per publisher doesnt sound bad at all.
>>>
>>>
>>> Markus
>>>
>>> PS: I am expressing my personal thoughts in this conversation and  
>>> not GBIFs official policy.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 25, 2008, at 6:26, Gregor Hagedorn wrote:
>>>
>>>> I previously concurred with arguments against DOI on the basis of
>>>> cost. However, is this correct?
>>>>
>>>> http://www.tib-hannover.de/en/the-tib/doi-registration-agency/  
>>>> states
>>>> a yearly fee of 250 EUR for the publisher, not a per-object fee.  
>>>> That
>>>> is considerably less than the Total Cost of Ownership of running
>>>> custom-designed LSID software. DOI is well established and many  
>>>> people
>>>> already know that it can be looked up on the web ...
>>>>
>>>> Gregor
>>>> -- 
>>>> ---------------------------------
>>>> Gregor Hagedorn
>>>> Heinrich-Seidel-Str. 2
>>>> 12167 Berlin
>>>> skype: g.hagedorn
>>>>
>>>> This message is sent on a personal basis and does not constitute an
>>>> activity of the German Federal Government or its research
>>>> institutions. Together with any attachments, this message is  
>>>> intended
>>>> for the addressee(s) only and may not be redistributed without
>>>> permission.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> tdwg-tag mailing list
>>>> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
>>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tdwg-tag mailing list
>>> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>> Roger Hyam
>> Roger at BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org
>> http://www.BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>> Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
>> 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK
>> Tel: +44 131 552 7171 ext 3015
>> Fax: +44 131 248 2901
>> http://www.rbge.org.uk/
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/attachments/20081125/c08f795d/attachment.html

More information about the tdwg-tag mailing list