About a BUOI: Joint Custody of Persistent Universally Unique Identifiers on the Web, or, Making PIDs More FAIR

The findability and interoperability of some persistent identifiers (PIDs) in use on the internet and their compliance with the FAIR data principles [12, 35] are explored. It is suggested that the wide distribution and findability (e.g. by simple ‘googling’) on the internet may be more important for the usefulness of identifiers, than the resolvability of links by one single authority, purportedly guaranteeing their permanence and authenticity. The prevalence of phenomena such as link rot implies that the permanence of URLs, PURLs or URIs cannot be trusted. By contrast, the well distributed, but seldom directly resolvable ISBN identifier has proved remarkably resilient, with far-reaching persistence, inherent structural meaning and good validatability, by means of fixed string-length, pattern-recognition, restricted character set and check digit. Adding context and meaning to identifiers through namespace prefixes and object types is also suggested. Arguing for a wide distribution of validatable identifiers, the conclusion resembles the experience of the boy Marcus in the novel-based film About a boy, from living with a suicidal mother: It’s not sufficient to rely on one source only for sustenance. You need more than that. You need backup, in case something happens [20, 32].