[tdwg-tag] Are DOIs expensive?

Tue Nov 25 18:09:03 CET 2008

George Garrity (NamesforLife©) attended the first TWWG/GBIF GUID  
meeting, and thought we were all crazy. He's using DOIs for Bacteria,  
e.g. http://dx.doi.org/10.1601/nm.820

There's a list of DOIs for bacterial names at http://www.taxonomicoutline.org/

I've not seen anybody use these outside Garrity himself. NCBI, for  
example, doesn't use them.

Regards

Rod

On 25 Nov 2008, at 16:19, 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/
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-tag mailing list
> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html