PIDs for internal, non-public research objects

Hi everyone,

I hope all are well. I am working with an organization that is looking to use PIDs for better internal management of research objects (i.e., reports, datasets, working papers that are not public).

My question for the group is: what types of PIDs are people using for internal purposes for research objects that are not public and not expected to be public in the future? I know that DOIs are still an option as long as the metadata is public, and ARKs or Handles could be good options, but does anyone have examples of this type of usage in practice, or insight they could share?

Many thanks!
Sheila Rabun

Hi Sheila! If the objects are not expected to be public in the future, I would use an internally-generated ID such as a UUID. If it needs to be typed in by humans, use something more user friendly. An ID-generator service can be easily implemented with a database sequence. Maybe more details on the use cases, could help shape the answer in a more useful way.

Cheers!
Marco

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UUID can be prefixed with a Handle prefix if you want to make them resolvable, and that gives you the option of making them public later if you need to.

You can obtain a Handle prefix cheaply e.g., http://handle.net/ and it’s easy to use Cordra object server, https://www.cordra.org/ to hold metadata about your objects and resolve to them. Cordra automatically generates opaque object id’s or you can tell it what to use as the suffix.

Here: https://www.cordra.org/ you can see DiSSCo’s experimental object server to give you the idea.

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