DOI News
April 2006
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In this issue:
- Seminar: Digital objects and the management of information
- Interoperability tool launched
- Identifier Interoperability: recent ISO activities
- CrossRef launches free-text service to find DOIs
- DOIs assigned to medical case studies
The International DOI Foundation is collaborating with the Oxford Internet Institute and the e-Horizons Institute to present a half day seminar in June on "Digital objects and the management of information", with a range of international speakers.
Meeting synopsis: Digital information needs to be a first class citizen in the networked environment. The fundamental attribute of digital information is that it is processable data, enabling new forms of electronic commerce, creativity and social benefit.
Some existing and emerging applications have successfully managed information in the form of digital objects which are stored, accessed, disseminated and managed. A digital object is a data structure whose principal components are digital material, or data, plus a unique identifier for this material. A digital object architecture provides naming conventions for identifying and locating digital objects, a service for using object names to locate and disseminate objects, and access protocols, forming an infrastructure that is open, and which supports a large and extensible class of distributed digital information services. Digital libraries are one example of such services; numerous other examples of such services may be found in emerging electronic commerce applications.
Digital information can be similar to or quite different from other forms of information that we are used to dealing with outside the networked environment. This seminar will discuss several examples of information management using digital objects, and also hear from application areas where digitisation is a hot topic.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday 20th June 2006, following the IDF's annual meeting for members, at the Said Business School, University of Oxford.
For further information see:
The International DOI Foundation announces the launch of the web site for the MPEG-21 Rights Data Dictionary (RDD): the international standard ISO/IEC 21000-6. This dictionary provides the basis for a resource to create widely understood, consistent meaning for Digital Rights Management systems and other systems requiring semantic interoperability of terms. The RDD is publicly available through a web site; it is extensible and will expand through registration of new terms.
The ISO/IEC 21000-6 dictionary is designed as a component of MPEG-21 to support the MPEG REL (Rights Expression Language), but is based on a generic methodology. The Registration Authority also intends to promote the adoption of ISO/IEC 21000-6 in other sectors and initiatives where similar requirements have been identified: in particular as the registry for metadata semantics for standard content identifiers. It provides a set of standard meanings to enable different communities to exchange precise information. The MPEG RDD is a realisation of the concept of semantic interoperability evolved from the indecs (interoperability of data in e-commerce systems) project. Rights are complex and many metadata schemes are already in use; the deployment of an interoperable and standard dictionary provides a solution to cope with this real-world diversity.
The International DOI Foundation was appointed by ISO/IEC JTC1 as the ISO/IEC 21000-6 Registration Authority, to maintain the Terms and TermSets that are defined in the standard, and additional terms that are registered in accordance with the standard through the ISO/IEC 21000-6 Registration Authority. Unique Term IDs will be allocated to each entry in the dictionary; these will be Digital Object identifiers. Technical oepations of the RDD are subcontracted to Rightscom Ltd.
The ISO/IEC 21000-6 Rights Data Dictionary is now available at the web site
http://www.iso21000-6.net. This web site provides information about the operation and basis of the RDD and access to view and submit Terms for mapping and registration in the Dictionary.
For further information see
D-Lib Magazine April 2006 carries an article reporting on two significant activities within ISO, the International Organisation for Standardization, each of which has potential implications for the management of content by digital libraries and their users. Moreover these two activities are complementary and have the potential to provide tools for significantly improved identifier interoperability. The first activity investigates the practical implications of interoperability across the family of ISO TC46/SC9 identifiers (better known as the ISBN and related identifiers); the second activity is the implementation of the ISO/IEC 21000-6 standard (see above), an ontology-based data dictionary which could provide a mechanism for this.
For further information, see: "Identifier Interoperability: A report on two recent ISO activities",
D-Lib Magazine, April 2006 [
doi:10.1045/april2006-paskin ]
CrossRef, the agency which uses DOIs in journal article cross-referencing, is trialling a new free-text query service. In partnership with Inera, CrossRef has deployed a custom version of Inera's eXtyles® refXpress that parses unstructured, free-text references into granular and valid XML and returns any matching DOIs for those references. The service is now available on a trial basis for CrossRef members.
A simple cut-and-paste form accepts references formatted in common bibliographic styles and returns the DOI for the article if one is found in CrossRef. Some smaller publishers will experience this interface as a viable alternative to CrossRef's batch query interface. As a result, more publishers will be able to implement reference linking using CrossRef.
According to CrossRef member Ian Michael of IM Publications,
"This is absolutely fantastic. We have been looking for a way to incorporate DOIs cost-effectively into our references and have failed, until now."
DOI Registration Agency the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) has begun to assign DOIs to medical case-studies, in co-operation with the European Congress for Radiology (ECR). These case-studies are used in medical education and can now be handled as regular citations, offering both service and benefit for students and doctors. 6,500 radiological case studies have been registered so far. The service offers a further example of the utility of DOI as an identifier not only for publications but for all entities managed in a digital environment.
The DOI is a system for interoperably identifying and exchanging
intellectual property in the digital environment. A DOI assigned to content enhances a content producer's ability to trade electronically. It provides a framework for managing content in any form at any level of granularity, for linking customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated copyright management for all types of media. The International DOI Foundation, a non-profit organization, manages development, policy and licensing of the DOI to registration agencies and technology providers and advises on usage and development of related services and technologies. The DOI system uses open standards with a standard syntax (ANSI/NISO Z39.84) and is currently used by leading international technology and content organizations.
This is a service announcement for the International Digital Object
Identifier Foundation and has been prepared to inform you of developments to enable digital copyright management of intellectual property. For more information, please send your request to contact@doi.org.
Prepared 19 April 2006
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