Does anyone have advice or experience related to including multiple target URLs for a DOI? I am helping a user running a database that will be mirrored at a separate repository. They want to be able to use one DOI for the database and they want to be able to reflect in the DOI metadata the location of the primary database as well as the mirrored version. It seems as though this could potentially be accomplished by adding the alternate URL as a related identifier and classifying the relation type as “IsIdenticalTo.” I don’t think any of the other relation types would be appropriate.
I’d really welcome others’ thoughts on this scenario and any other approaches/implications to consider.
This functionality, multiple URLs for the same DOI, is currently not supported by DataCite. We did work on this two years ago as the handle system can support this (https://www.handle.net/overviews/handle_type_10320_loc.html), but never found a use case that needed this. In short, 10320/loc allows you to resolve a single DOI to multiple locations.
If this is about multiple DOIs for the same resource, but multiple locations, then what you suggest might be a good way to implement this, but that is something slightly different.
Thanks, Martin. I think this is more about being able to support a single DOI for a database and its alternative location, so it is good to hear that the related identifier element and the identical relationship type should be a good approach for this scenario.
@mariagould I rephrased the second sentence of my answer, as I released it was a bit confusing. You need at least two DOIs in what you are proposing, so different from a single DOI with multiple target URLs.
Martin, can you clarify why two DOIs are needed? Why wouldn’t it be possible to use the alternate URL as the related identifier?
Sorry, yes you can do that.