[tdwg-tag] Specimen identifiers

Gregor Hagedorn g.m.hagedorn at gmail.com
Fri Feb 24 09:53:08 CET 2012


On 23 February 2012 20:41, Kevin Richards
<RichardsK at landcareresearch.co.nz> wrote:
> Another problem is what the identifier refers to.  As someone (I think Rich) said in a recent post, two different people may apply the same identifier to slightly different things - eg to the "name" of a person, or to the "person" itself.  This is another barrier to reuse of shared identifiers.

My understanding of the semantic web is actually that giving DIFFERENT
identifiers (and as Rich says:  "globally unique", "persistent", and
"actionable") to things is a GOOD thing.

Depending on your purpose, two identifiers may or may not be the same.
This is a standard problem, and I believe it is much easier solved if
I have 2 identifiers and separate sameAs assertions. I can use the
existing sameAs as my default, but can easily differ in opinion (by
using contradictory sameAs - which may involve localizing and
modifying the default sameAs, but at least it is solvable.)

With regard to publications:
Should a
a) OpenAccess Preprint
b) OpenAccess Postprint
c) ClosedAccess Elsevier Journal
(well, rare to find these together :-) )
have the same ID or not?

For many purposes they are sameAs, but not for all.

----

However, Rod is correct about the poor history (although I don't
consider LSIDs actionable, they are about as actionable as the text
strings - you can machine-resolve both, but...).

I just thing Rod should call for re-use of identifiers where it is
believed to be identical for all purposes and new identifiers  PLUS
sameAs relations where uncertain.

Gregor


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