[Discuss-DOI] Killing 2 birds

[Eric Hellman <eric@hellman.net>]

Here's a modest suggestion on the DOI syntax.

First of all, note that the DOI syntax, as last proposed, is not compatible
with being a URI without encoding. Note also that it is inappropriate for
non-digital representations, (such as print) because non-printing and
ambiguous characters are allowed. There is a need for a clearly defined
extented syntax for representing the DOI in URI's and in print.

Second, note that once metadata frameworks get decided, it will be easy and
fast (assuming the metadata is done competently) for machines to look up
metadata such as primary type, given the "pure" DOI string. Thus, for
machine use, the proposed syntax addition ( "(W)" and the like) is
redundant.

Nonetheless, the primary type is useful to humans.

A DOI-URI syntax prefix can address this issue without touching the "pure
DOI", which frequently will require encoding anyway.

something like:

uri:doi:w:10.1000/131

would be the URI-DOI, suitable for printing and use on the web

while

"10.1000/131"
HEX(31302E3030302F313331)
Binary(0011000100110000001011100011000000110000001100000010111100110001001100110
0110001)

are representations of the "pure" doi, suitable for machine use.

Eric
Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           Tools for 21st Century Scholarly Publishing

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