I know we've pretty much abandoned DOIs, but I thought the following example might serve as a reminder that persistence is a social problem, not a technical one. DOIs are perhaps the most widespread GUIDs relevant to our area, and have a lot of technical and financial resources behind them. But they can still fail.
For example, the DOI 10.1600/0363-6445(2003)028[0387:PORLFR]2.0.CO;2 doesn't exist in CrossRef (try http://dx.doi.org/10.1600/0363-6445(2003)028%5B0387:PORLFR%5D2.0.CO;2). The paper with this DOI is here: http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get- abstract&doi=10.1600%2F0363 -6445%282003%29028%5B0387%3APORLFR%5D2.0.CO%3B2
This problem affects a lot of BioOne-hosted journals (for another example see my comments on using Flickr to store Open Access images - http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2006/05/open-access-taxonomy.html). I've been in touch with both CrossRef and BioOne about this, and it may be a few months before this is resolved (BioOne have installed some new software, and haven't registered their DOIs -- which as far as I can figure out violates CrossRef's rules).
The DOI example above is particularly annoying for me, because it relates to IPNI's LSIDs. One of my favourite plant taxa is Poissonia heterantha (lsidres:urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:20012728-1). The IPNI metadata for this name include the following:
tn:publishedInSyst. Bot. 28(2): 401 (2003). </tn:publishedIn>
Wouldn't it be nice to have something like:
<tn:publishedIn rdf:resource="doi:10.1600/0363-6445(2003)028[0387:PORLFR]2.0.CO;2" />
Given a DOI, users can locate the article quickly and, via CrossRef, extract metadata. The more taxonomic literature is associated with GUIDs such as DOIs, Handles, and LSIDs, the better.
It's interesting (and disconcerting) that even DOIs can be screwed up.
Rod
------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------- Professor Roderic D. M. Page Editor, Systematic Biology DEEB, IBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QP United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html
Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/ Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com