Internet Draft Norman Paskin Document: draft-paskin-doi-uri-00.txt IDF Expires: August, 2002 Eamonn Neylon Manifest Solutions Tony Hammond Elsevier Science Sam Sun CNRI February, 2002 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at: http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2002. All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document defines the "doi" Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). The DOI system was developed by the International DOI Foundation (http://www.doi.org), an open membership-based organization founded to develop a framework of infrastructure, policies and procedures to support the identification needs of providers of intellectual property. DOI identifiers are persistent across time and unique across network space. The "doi" URI scheme allows a DOI to be referenced by a URI for Internet applications. The key words "MUST", "MAY", and "SHOULD" used in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. Compliant software MUST follow this specification. 1. Introduction DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier [DOI], which is a managed identifier of an intellectual property entity across a common business sector. The DOI identifier enables the network retrieval of a set of related services. The DOI identifier is not constrained to a network application context. DOI identifiers have been widely deployed by the publishing industry. This specification defines the "doi" URI scheme for DOI identifiers referenced within Internet applications. DOI identifiers are globally unique across the URI namespace and persistent over time. A DOI identifier can "be used as a reference to a resource well beyond the lifetime of the resource it identifies or of any naming authority involved in the assignment of its name" [RFC1737]. A "doi" URI has associated data related to the entity that the DOI identifies. The "doi" URI scheme defines a standard way to represent a DOI identifier under URI namespace. A "doi" URI may serve as a pure name or may be de-referenced by a network service. When used as a name, a "doi"-based URI is independent of any service protocol and accordingly, is not network de-referenceable. When used within a network reference (e.g. within a hyperlink), a DOI identifier does not have a native resolution system. It is instead transported using a network protocol to a specific service (e.g. the Handle System [HS], or a HTTP request to a proxy). Such service requests may also include supplemental query components specific to that service. DOIs must be registered through an appointed registration agency. The International DOI Foundation, which is the maintenance agency for the DOI, is responsible for the appointment of registration agencies. The "doi" URI scheme defined in this document conforms to the generic URI syntax as specified in RFC2396 [RFC2396]. UTF-8 [UTF-8] encoding is mandated for any DOI transmitted between "doi" user agent and any DOI service. Syntax for DOI identifier within the "doi" scheme is defined in accordance with ANSI/NISO Z39.84 [NISO39.84] standard for Digital Object Identifier Syntax. 2. The ôdoiö URI Scheme 2.1. ôdoiö Scheme Definition doi = scheme ":" doi-identifier scheme = "doi" doi-identifier = prefix "/" suffix prefix = chars-no-slash suffix = chars chars-no-slash = 1*(%x00-2E / %x30-FF) ; any character of the UCS [ISO10646] of U+00A0 ; and beyond, except the '/' character. chars = 1*(%x00-FF) ; any character of the UCS [ISO10646] of U+00A0 ; and beyond. The prefix is always assigned to a registrant by a registration agency. The registrant is responsible for the creation of a valid suffix. The prefix corresponds to the creator naming authority at the time of construction only. The administration of any particular DOI may be transferred to another party at any time, so the prefix does not denote the administrative ownership of a particular DOI. NISO Z39.84 is the authoritative reference that specifies the rules for constructing a DOI. Once constructed, a DOI is to be interpreted as an opaque identifier. The minimum constraints for validation of a DOI string are that the prefix and suffix components be non-empty. 2.2. Reserved and Excluded Characters under "doi" scheme The "doi" syntax abide by the same set of excluded US-ASCII characters as specified in RFC2396. It further reserves the following characters that are used in common service requests that may be used to append information to a DOI in certain circumstances (e.g. adding parameters resolution instructions to a HTTP URL encoded service request): reserved = "?" | "&" | "=" | "#" If the data for a "doi-identifier" component would conflict with the reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before forming the URI. Details of the escape encoding can be found in RFC2396, section 2.4. 2.3. Examples of "doi" URIs Some examples of syntactically valid "doi" URIs are given below: (a) doi:alpha-beta/182.342-24 where "alpha-beta" is the prefix and "182.342-24" is the suffix (b) doi:10.abc/ab/cd/ef where "10.abc" is the prefix and "ab/cd/ef" is the suffix (c) doi:1.23/2002/january/21/4690 where "1.23" is the prefix and "january/21/4690" is the suffix (d) <element xmlns="doi:1.23/2002/january/21/4690"> The acquisition of DOI services can be achieved through the use other protocols as a proxy to transfer to dedicated networked service components. Examples of such use are given below: (e) http://my.resolver.inc/resolve?id=doi%3Aalpha-beta%2Fmsws is an OpenURL [NISO Z39.??] service request for "doi:alpha-beta/msws" (f) rtsp://service.net/query?doi%3A10.abc%2Fab%2Fcd%2Fef is a service request for "doi:10.abc/ab/cd/ef" 3. Security Considerations The "doi" URI scheme is subject to the same security implications as the general URI scheme described in [RFC 2396]. When DOI values are used in resolution services, retrieval of DOI data will be subject to the security considerations of the underlying protocol used to access the DOI service. 4. Further Information The current DOI system utilizes the Handle System [HS] for its identifier resolution and administration. Information regarding the Handle System can be found under http://www.handle.net/. 5. Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Larry Lannom and Jason Petrone, of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, to this specification. 6. AuthorsÆ Addresses Norman Paskin The International DOI Foundation PO Box 233, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1XU, UK n.paskin@doi.org Eamonn Neylon Manifest Solutions John Eccles House, Oxford Science Park Oxford, OX4 4GP, United Kingdom eneylon@manifestsolutions.com Tony Hammond Elsevier Science Jamestown Road Camden Town, London NW1 United Kingdom tony_hammond@harcourt.com Sam Sun Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1805 Preston White Dr., Suite 100 Reston, VA 20191 ssun@cnri.reston.va.us 7. References [DOI] The DOI System http://www.doi.org/ [HS] The Handle System http://www.handle.net/ [RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., R. Fielding and L. Manister, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt, August 1998. [HTTP] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP/1.1", http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2068.txt, January, 1997. [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key Words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt, March 1997. [NISO39.84] ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2000 Syntax for Digital Object Identifier, http://www.techstreet.com/cgi-bin/pdf/free/247384/z39.84.pdf [NISO Z39.??] ANSI/NISO Z39.??-2002 OpenURL Standard [ISO10646]Information Technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane", ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000. [UTF-8] Yergeau, Francois, "UTF-8, A Transformation Format for Unicode and ISO10646", October 1996, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2044.txt [RFC1737] K. Sollins and L. Masinter ôFunctional Requirements for Uniform Resource Namesö http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1737.txt, December 1994.